


This Tangled Web

by Cori Lannam (corilannam)



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Spiderman Fusion, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, M/M, oh geez it's a Spidey AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-29
Updated: 2016-03-31
Packaged: 2018-04-06 17:08:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 29,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4229970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/corilannam/pseuds/Cori%20Lannam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I know what you’re thinking. Superheroes, innit. Masked vigilantes, living a solitary life, no friends, dead family, a plucky gal pal with unrealistic expectations about relationships. Definitely a fortress or lair, because rent's never a problem for a billionaire playboy. </p><p>Me, I'm stuck in a truly shit flat in Manchester with a moody flatmate, juggling uni and too many shifts at the true Bastion of Evil (which Zayn won't let me defeat because we need rent money and being a superhero pays worse than Starbucks).</p><p>The mask thing is true, at least. Kind of necessary in this line of work, what with the secret identity and all. Yeah, I know that sounds pretentious as fuck, but let one grateful victim see your face, and pretty soon everyone thinks they're going to be the guy who shuts you down. If the supervillain of the week doesn't get you, some self-righteous, overachieving copper will (sorry, Liam).</p><p>At least Harry thinks the mask is sexy. </p><p>Yeah, I have a Harry, too. My gorgeous pop star boyfriend. And getting with him had nothing to do with me extracurricular activities, thank you. Well, it did, but not like—</p><p>Right. Shut, it, Tommo. Just let the people judge for themselves. You'll see.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Origins

**Author's Note:**

> Well, I've always wanted to do some kind of superhero AU, and Louis as Spidey was just too much to resist (you know how it is). I've never posted anything in progress before, so I'm all nervous and excited and really hoping someone out there will like this thing because I'm crazy in love with it and will just have to continue on regardless.
> 
> Warnings for some racism in this chapter. Future chapters will have some violence, including talk of domestic violence.
> 
> Much love to my BFF and editor, Chelsea Frew, for the emotional (and comma) support.

I know what you’re thinking. Superheroes, innit. Masked vigilantes, living a solitary life, no friends, dead family, a plucky gal pal with unrealistic expectations about relationships. Definitely some kind of fortress or lair, because rent's never a problem for a billionaire playboy. 

Me, I'm stuck in a truly shit flat in Manchester with a moody flatmate, juggling uni classes, theatre rehearsals, and too many shifts at the true Villainous Bastion of Evil (which Zayn won't let me defeat because we need rent money and being a superhero pays worse than Starbucks). My biological father fucked off to fuck knows where when I was a baby, but I've got the best mum in the world, a pretty great stepdad, and four annoying, amazing sisters with two more on the way. 

The mask thing is true, at least. Kind of necessary in this line of work, what with the secret identity and all. Yeah, I know that sounds pretentious as fuck, but let one grateful victim see your face, and pretty soon everyone thinks they're going to be the guy who shuts you down. If the supervillain of the week doesn't get you, some self-righteous, overachieving copper will (sorry, Liam).

At least Harry thinks the mask is sexy. 

Yeah, I have a Harry, too. My gorgeous pop star boyfriend (you're not gonna get weird about the gay superhero thing, are you? Seriously, mate, it's 2015). And getting with him had nothing to do with me extracurricular activities, thank you. Well, it did, but not like—

Right. Shut, it, Tommo. Just let the people judge for themselves. You'll see.

***

A bead of water was forming on the middle left ice cube. Right now it was only a swell of liquid on the surface, but any second....

"Louis."

"Not now, Zayn." The water bead fattened, starting to look like a proper drop. "I think I'm about to see some action here."

"Mate, I have six frappuccinos waiting. The only action you need to concern yourself with involves a blender." 

A plink at the bottom of the cup startled him with the loss of his water drop. He huffed and straightened up. "Fucking frappuccinos."

"Look, you think I wouldn't rather be watching a cup of ice melt?" Zayn demanded. "Of course I bloody would. But what I'd really rather be able to do is—"

"--pay the rent this month," Louis finished. The discontent that always gnawed at his soul dug its teeth in a little sharper, but he tamped it down out of long habit and followed Zayn back out to the front of the shop. Louis William Tomlinson was meant for greater things, but for now he had...frappuccinos.

Zayn had left a blender of mocha coconut frap on the back counter. Louis poured it out into the two cups marked for it, slathered on the required toppings, and smacked two lids on. "Mocha Coconut for--" He squinted at the name scrawled on the side of the first cup. For an art student, Zayn had terrible handwriting. "Roger?"

A sour-faced white bloke in an ill-fitting suit stepped up to the counter. Louis' eyes barely flicked over him as he pushed the drink towards him and dropped a straw next to it. "Thank you, sir. Enjoy your drink."

He was already lifting the second frap to read the name on it when the suit cleared his throat. "Excuse me. Can you tell me which one of you made this drink?"

Instantly, Louis felt Zayn stiffen behind him, and he understood why Zayn had really dragged him out of the break room. His professionally polite look dropped into barely civil disdain. "Everything's a team effort here at Starbucks, sir."

The man blew out an impatient huff, as though Louis were the one being unreasonable. "Look, I just want to know if it was you or the Paki who made it."

Louis gave an even bigger sigh. "Yes, I was afraid that was where you were going with this," he said and then raised his voice, calling a full year of drama training to his aid. "Excuse me, everyone! Our racist friend Roger here has bought a coconut mocha frappuccino for a lucky fellow customer. Don't worry, you don't have to be a racist yourself. You just have to be willing to admit you'd drink a coconut mocha frappuccino."

He held the cup high in the air and grinned as the entire shop quieted and turned to stare at him and the vile Roger, who was sweating more than the cold drink. "You little shit," the man hissed with a look that could have seared Louis' eyebrows off, if Louis had given half a shit about it. "You perverted little—"

"Right, I'm gonna stop you right there," Louis said, "because I see an adorable little girl who looks like she could use a chocolatey coconut treat in her life."

The tiny dark-skinned girl was standing in line with her mother. She couldn't have been more than eight or nine, and Louis felt a little bad using her to make a point. But she was eyeing the frap in his hand the same way Louis eyed a fit bloke on the dance floor, and her face lit up like a sunbeam when he nodded at her and waggled the frappuccino in her direction.

Louis quickly got a straw into the cup as she ran forward and grabbed for it. Her mother made a grab for her as she ran for the door, but missed. "Does that have coffee in it?" she called in Louis' general direction, but she was out the door in pursuit of her child before Louis could finish shrugging.

"You little shit," Roger repeated with stunning originality. "I paid for that fucking drink."

"And a very kind donation it was," Louis agreed before leaning across the counter, going on his tip toes to keep at eye level with the man. "Now get out of my shop."

If Louis lived in an actual film (rather than only narrating one in his head), the entire shop would have burst into applause as Roger turned on his heel and stomped out the door. However, Louis lived in England, which meant that the entire shop shifted uncomfortably as the door slowly wheezed shut and then went back to staring at their phones.

And Louis still had another coconut mocha frap to deal with. The second cup just had an "H" scrawled at the top—a fucking huge "H," actually, with a question mark and several exclamation marks next to it and a series of hearts underneath.

"Oh, uh, that's mine, I think," said a soft, deep male voice in front of him; Northern, though not quite local. 

When he looked up, he found a man—a boy, his own age, if not a bit younger—bundled in a fleece-lined jacket and a knit cap too heavy for the early autumn weather. Green eyes, how odd, he thought before the boy's smile broke out and obliterated all his observatory powers beyond _dimple._

"I guess I have to admit that I'd actually drink a coconut mocha frappuccino," the boy said with that smile. "Or should I pretend it's for someone else?"

Louis sucked in a breath and pulled his shit together. "That would have been the better option, but afraid it's too late, mate. I've already profiled you." 

"You should compare notes with my—with my mate." The tiniest twitch of the boy's shoulder conveyed artful self-deprecation. "He said the girly coffee drinks are all that save me from wretched hipsterdom." 

"Come back later and I'll make you the girliest drink I've ever discovered," Louis blurted; then he closed his eyes to more fully experience the resultant rush of mortification. Without opening them, he pointed toward the chalkboard sign he had supervised Zayn creating that morning. "What I meant was, if you bring in your treat recipe after two p.m., you'll get two quid off another drink."

The boy ("H?!!!!") lifted his drink in a little salute. "If I need an extra push towards the diabetes, I'll come right in."

Shot down. Louis mimicked the boy's self-effacing shrug with a tiny smile: can't blame a guy for trying innit? "Enjoy your drink, Mr H."

The next batch of overdue frappuccinos awaited his attentions, but before his mind could fully turn back to them, blunt fingertips brushed his wrist to bring him back to the boy. "That was really amazing, what you did," H said. "Standing up to that wanker like that."

The wanker in question had already fled Louis' memory almost as fast as he had fled the store. "Nah." He shrugged again. "Nothing special about putting a minging dumbwit in his place. Anyone would have done the same."

H's smile dimmed, though his fingers tightened on Louis' wrist. "No. They wouldn't have," he said and stepped back. "I'll be back later for that drink."

"Sure you will." Louis grinned, making it a challenge, until the sweet-faced boy grinned back and slipped out of the shop with a final wave.

He watched until H disappeared into the world beyond the windows of the shop and wished he did live in a film where this scene might have ended differently, or at least had hope of a second act. Just as he sighed and started to turn back to the blender, Zayn crashed into his back and gripped Louis' arms.

"I know, I know, there are more frappuccinos." Louis tried to shake off the daydream and Zayn, but both only gripped back harder.

"Holy shit, Louis," Zayn said in his ear. "Did you see him?"

"Of course I—oh wait, you mean the wanker? Yeah, I had your back. Didn't you hear me?"

"What? No, I mean—" Zayn dropped his voice to a fierce whisper in Louis' ear. "—Harry fucking Styles."

"Huh? The singer?" Puzzle pieces from different contexts slowly snapped together one at a time: big green eyes, sweet smile, knit cap that could have been hiding a mop of curls. "Wait, are you serious? That was Harry Styles? The Harry Styles?"

"The Harry Styles who was fucking trying to pull you, mate." Zayn's voice rose a bit in excitement, even though he had been the one drawing amorous emojis around the boy's initial. 

A sudden disappointment sucked out the rest of his exhilaration from the encounter. He wrested himself from Zayn's grip and skirted around him. "Nah, he wasn't trying to pull me." If "H" was actually code for "world-famous pop star," that just made it even less likely than Louis had originally thought. "It was just a bit of banter. If that was really him, then he's probably like that with everyone."

Zayn followed him and opened his mouth to offer some other useless opinion, but Louis drowned him out with the blender until Zayn rolled his eyes and went to deal with the queue of customers. It was a shame, it was. H—Harry—had seemed quite lovely. Not just his pretty eyes or his broad shoulders or his deep voice, but his easy humour and the way he had looked at Louis and made him wish he actually were the kind of person someone would look at like that. 

He finished up two caramel lights and a strawberries and cream. Another week until pumpkin spice latte season returned. Nobody would want anything else after that. He couldn't wait.

"Louis," he heard as soon as he switched off the blender. 

He closed his eyes at the familiar voice and pasted on his best customer service smile before turning round. "Louise, my darling. What can I do for you?"

"I know I ordered soy milk, but this is regular milk." She held up her grande iced sugar-free vanilla latte with soy milk, which Louis had been making her almost every day for the last six weeks. For the last three, he had screwed it up somehow every time, at least according to Louise.

"Is it now?" It wasn't, but Louis took the cup from her anyway, meeting her anxious frown with a soothing smile. She wouldn't see the gritted teeth. "Let me remake that for you, love."

She nodded, stiff spine relaxing the tiniest bit as she crowded up to the counter and watched him. "You need to focus better. I don't like drinking cows."

"I'm sure the cows appreciate that." Louis concentrated on her drinks more than he concentrated on any of his classes, though his professors at least appreciated his efforts. He made a show of waggling the jug of soy milk in front of her, earning a tiny smile. "Love what you've done with your hair, by the way. The lavender suits you."

She ducked her head, though it didn't hide the flush in her cheeks or her pleased smile. "Cheers. Lux says it makes me look like a fairy princess."

Louis scooped ice into the cup, exactly half full, the way she preferred. "And where is my favourite fairy princess this morning? Not poorly, I hope."

"No, she's—" Louise took a breath, smile stiffening. "She's with my sister in London for the mo."

"Ah. Getting spoiled rotten, innit." Louis poured the coffee over the ice, snapped the lid on, and held it up in triumph. "Here we are. I can personally promise that no cow has so much as looked at this coffee."

She never bothered to taste his second attempts, just gave him another small smile and waved good-bye. Louis watched her go with exasperated fondness. "If I hadn't made it absolutely clear to her that I'm queer as a football bat, I'd think she wanted in my pants."

Zayn shrugged as he handed over the last three tall coffees to the last of the morning's rushed commuters. "I keep telling you, mate, she's just using you to get to me. Happens every time."

It did happen often enough that Louis would have started minding, if they hadn't always been women. "You're not all that straight yourself," he pointed out.

Zayn shrugged again and started rinsing out the mixing cups. "Always open to new experiences. Speaking of, you're still coming with me tonight, yeah?"

"To what?" 

"The tour!" Zayn turned off the tap and flicked his wet fingers at Louis. "The tour of the new Cowell BioIndustries labs. C'mon, bro, you promised."

"I thought you were joking." Louis hadn't, but it sounded better than admitting he'd forgotten all about it. "All day in this place, and you want to go to a laboratory? I think that old orange scone is still stuck under the fridge if you're that hard up for a science experiment."

"No, man, it's going to be sick. They've been doing some freaky shit over in America, and this is their first European branch, right here in Manny. Tonight's the only night they're letting the public in to see the place before they start the freaky shit." Zayn finally paused for breath—and to level a dour look on Louis. "And you owe me, bro. I haven't forgotten that shit musical you dragged me to last term."

"Pippin is a classic," Louis protested, though he knew he'd already lost. That really had been a shit production. 

"Bro. I need this for my book."

And if Zayn was pulling the comic book trump card, that was that. Louis made his own production out of his dramatic sigh of surrender. "All right. But this better be worth my while."

Zayn grinned. "Freaky shit," he promised.

***

Harry stood at the corner waiting for the light to change. He didn't realise it already had until a slender arm twined around his elbow and dragged him out into the crosswalk. "Oh, hullo, Lou," he said into a mouthful of lavender hair. "Sorry, didn't see you there."

"And here I thought you were waiting for me," she teased with a squeeze to his bicep. 

"I would have," he said. "But I dunno. I was just enjoying being outside, you know?"

She gave him another squeeze, silent acknowledgement that she knew. Dressing down and tucking his famous hair under a hat didn't always keep him from being recognized and harassed, but when it did, he soaked in the anonymity, the flow of people around him, going on their way without catching on the flytrap of his celebrity.

They paused at the next corner to cross the street to the warehouse studio where tour rehearsals and album recording were beginning simultaneously today, and Harry took the opportunity to look at her properly. She seemed a bit lighter than she had last night when they'd had the crew reunion dinner, though she'd denied anything was wrong then. But after three tours, Harry knew his stylist better than that.

Then he noticed the cup in her hand and groaned. "Really? I was ignoring you in Starbucks, too? I'm such a numpty."

"I didn't want to interrupt you."

"Interrupt?" God, had he become so untouchably famous that his own crew was treating him like a diva? He wasn't a diva yet, was he? "Honestly, Lou, I was just standing there."

"Oh, my mistake," she said airily. "When I saw you, I thought you were flirting with Louis the fit barista."

Louis. So that was his name. Harry's fingers brushed his pocket and felt the receipt crinkling inside. The boy, this Louis, clearly hadn't recognized him, but had flirted with him anyway. It had been a long time since that had happened.

"Oh my God, there you go again." Lou let go of his arm to knock on the door of the rehearsal studio. "Never seen you like this, H. It's fucking adorable."

H. He looked down at his cup where Louis' coworker (the other fit barista) had embellished Harry's initial with a series of punctuation showing that at least one person had recognised him this morning. So he supposed Louis knew who he was by now. Would that make any difference? he wondered.

Paul opened the door to let him and Lou into the building. Harry touched the receipt in his pocket again. Maybe, if he was thirsty enough after rehearsal, he could find out.

"Magee is here," Paul muttered in his ear as Harry slipped past him.

Harry sighed and gave him an overly cheerful thumbs up over his shoulder. Why his manager would bother making the drive up from London for the first day of rehearsals, Harry couldn't fathom, but Harry Magee had become much more hands-on with his favourite (read: most profitable) client over the last year. By the time the last tour ended, Harry had almost collapsed with exhaustion from the constant stream of promotional appearances, interviews, and other wheeling and dealing that was a twenty-four seven occupation for Magee. Harry had been sick of his own face by the time he managed to wrangle a few months off to actually write new music.

"Harry! My second favourite Harry!" Magee started chortling at his own joke before Harry even finished stepping over the threshold into the open rehearsal space. "Hello, Harry."

"Hello, Harry," Harry replied dutifully. He crossed the room to where Magee was standing next to Harry's guitar player, who mouthed 'hello, Harry' at him. Harry made a mental note to hide Niall's favourite picks later. "You came a long way for a boring day."

"I was in town anyway, actually." Magee shrugged so casually that it became a casual loop, meant to imply that of course he had come here just for Harry. "Though why you insist on recording and rehearsing in Manchester, I still don't quite understand."

Closer to his family, home for half his crew, and not where anyone would look for him, meaning he was much less likely to be recognised—which was probably most of Magee's objection to the place. But Harry had done his fair share of appearances, mob scenes, and fan pictures in London and LA. Now he just wanted to concentrate on his actual work.

"But of course I had to come." Magee startled him out of his thoughts with a heavy clap to his shoulder. "I have big plans for you, Harry lad. Very big plans."

***

Zayn was late. He was late because he had been sculpting and re-sculpting his quiff for the last forty-five minutes, which Louis knew because that's how long the loo door had been locked and he really needed a wee.

Not that Louis had been ready to leave at the agreed-upon time either, but he had still been fidgeting on the sofa for the better part of a half hour before he gave into the urge that had been nagging at him all day: to google Harry Styles concert videos. 

Louis knew Harry's face, ubiquitous as it was on the cover of every gossip rag, and he knew Harry's music, unavoidable as it was on the radio. Louis had always liked both well enough, ever since Harry Styles had swooped down into the pop music scene two years ago and carried off the hearts of teenage girls everywhere (and no few of their mums, nans, and gay brothers, uncles, and fathers). 

But experiencing the face in person, combined even just with Harry's speaking voice, had triggered some primal attraction that begged to be indulged. Louis clicked play on the first video that came up. It wasn't the best quality, wobbly camerawork combined with tinny sound. The shot wavered somewhere around Harry's knees (at least he assumed the knees were Harry's) and then went out of focus.

He was already lifting his thumb to back out of the video when the shot suddenly brought the rest of Harry into focus. The singer was moving towards the camera in an odd hopping dance Louis could neither name nor describe. Harry in motion was too dorky to be called graceful, limbs only marginally in his control. Yet his body moved with the beat, like the beat was inside him, driving him with joy.

Then the camera zoomed in on his face just as he flung his head back to scream out the chorus. The audience screamed with him, almost drowning him out, but Louis barely noticed the pain in his ears from the high-pitched noise. Harry's eyes were shut, mouth wide open, lips almost wrapped around the microphone, body tense with passion.

The video ended abruptly after that, as though the person filming had finally been overcome. Louis realized his own mouth was hanging open. He snapped it shut and licked his lips. That boy had been right in front of him this morning, looking at him with those eyes, and Louis--

Louis needed a reality check.

"Zayn!" he shouted over the noise of the hair dryer. "I'm weeing on the sofa. Just FYI."

The hair dryer continued its low whine for a few more seconds before it ceased. Then the door finally opened and Zayn's scowl appeared around it. "I nap on that sofa, you filthy animal."

Louis had already launched himself from the furniture in question. He barreled into the door like a drunk rugby player until Zayn stumbled back enough that Louis could squeeze past him. Sanctuary at last. He got the seat up and his dick out and then sighed with the exquisite pleasure of a long-overdue wee. 

"Could've just knocked, mate," Zayn grumbled as he wiggled out from where he'd been crammed between the door and the sink. "I was almost done."

"You've been almost done for ages." Louis shook, tucked, and zipped, and then squinted over at Zayn as he washed his hands. "And you look exactly the same as when you came in here."

Zayn's squawk of outrage trailed behind them as Louis grabbed his elbow and towed him out the door. 

***

Cowell BioIndustries had razed two blocks of the city centre, a short bus ride away, to build their massive new complex. When they alit, it wasn't hard to follow the glaring spotlights, bright signs, and jostling stream of curiosity seekers right up to the open front doors. 

Inside, the lobby opened up into a vast open space, chrome and white lighted panels spiraling upward until they faded into darkness. To Louis' wide eyes, it more resembled a museum or film set than any laboratory he had ever imagined. 

"Welcome to Cowell BioIndustries." A mellow, disembodied voice reverberated through the lobby. "Please enjoy the exhibition. The next guided tour will begin shortly."

Zayn bounced on his toes like the nerd he was, trying to crane his neck to look in every direction at once. "What do you want to see first?"

"You think they've got free food?" Louis had rather been counting on the free food, both to have something to do and because that was why poor working uni students went to shindigs like this in the first place. He had skipped tea tonight, just in case.

Zayn, as if he didn't hoard the leftover pastries at work when he closed, graced Louis with a brief look of disgust. "I am here for science, Lewis."

"Canapé, sir?" An actual silver platter appeared by Zayn's shoulder, accompanied by a politely bored waiter. He wavered in place, a temporary construct of a maliciously funny universe, while Zayn shut his eyes and wrestled with his dignity. 

"No, thank you," he said through gritted teeth at last.

"I, on the other hand," Louis interjected with his biggest, toothiest grin, "am a great fan of a well-constructed canapé."

The waiter showed no reaction to Louis' overblown glee, but stayed still long enough for Louis to pile five little toast rounds onto a tiny serviette before whirling back into the crowd. He stuffed one in his mouth and grinned around it at Zayn's disgruntled face.

"This one's got a bit of ham on it," he said when he'd swallowed most of it. "You should be thanking me for saving you."

The rumble of Zayn's stomach, audible through the buzz of the crowd around them, hinted that he might have been willing to risk it. The second canapé looked like salmon, but before Louis could wave the temptation under Zayn's nose, the crowd started shifting around them and the buzz amplified.

Louis returned Zayn's shrug and they let the crowd pull them along to the side of the room, where a bearded man in a lab coat stood at a raised podium. "Good evening, ladies and gentlemen," the man said into a microphone when everyone had bunched up in front of him. "Welcome again to Cowell BioIndustries. I'm Dr. Winston, head of the bio-tech development department, and Mr. Cowell has asked me to share a little of what we'll be working on when this new facility officially opens on Monday."

"Freaky shit," Zayn sing-songed in Louis' ear. Louis grinned and pretended not to notice the slender fingers nicking the salmon canapé off his serviette. 

The translucent wall panel behind Winston lit up with a timeline of mobile phones, from ancient blocks of plastic to the latest sleek smartphone. "The simple cellular phone," Winston said. "We take it for granted now, don't we? All the amazing things it can do, the constant developments in the technology. It's hard to impress you people nowadays."

A muted chuckle rippled through the crowd, self-deprecating acknowledgment of their own jadedness. In contrast, Louis felt the soft puff of Zayn's sigh. Zayn barely even used the antique flip phone he had. This was certainly not the freaky shit he'd been hoping for. Louis nudged his shoulder in sympathy and held out the last canapé.

The image display changed to a bright tangle of circuitry. Louis went back to planning out the perfect drink to make for Harry Styles.

"We've already seen some rudimentary eye movement control," Winston continued. "However—"

"Ben, Ben, Ben." A new voice interrupted him, booming even without a microphone. "This won't do, Ben. It just won't do."

Everyone craned their necks to look, and Louis had to jump up a couple of times before he spotted the man jogging up to the podium. He was older, though still dark haired and barrel chested. Even (or maybe especially) in a simple black t-shirt and tight jeans, he radiated power and authority.

Winston confirmed the impression when he stepped back and let the man take center stage. "Ladies and gentlemen, Simon Cowell, founder and chief executive officer of Cowell BioIndustries," he announced before handing Cowell the microphone.

Cowell waved off the polite applause before it could gain momentum. "I have to apologize, people. I asked Ben to talk to you because I thought he would bring a little style, a little flair to all this dry tech talk. Ben, what happened? A slide show, really?"

Winston chuckled deferentially and shrugged behind him. Cowell sliced his hand under his chin until the wall went dark behind him.

"That's better. I can see we have a particularly clever and curious group here." Cowell pointed up into the spiraling cone of the building and snapped his fingers. High above their heads, an entire floor lit up, forming a ring of bright light about halfway up the tower. "A slideshow won't do for you. I think you deserve to see the real thing, yes?"

A more convincing round of applause swelled up as more Cowell employees appeared to herd the crowd towards the bank of lifts at the back of the lobby. Zayn grinned, heartened. Louis grinned back, and then grabbed his arm. He wove through the crowd and, with judicious use of his elbows and muttered apologies, got them onto the first lift just before the doors closed. 

The lift car zoomed upwards with a whoosh, floor numbers flashing by with dizzying speed, until the lift came to a surprisingly gentle stop. When the doors opened, Louis and Zayn were the first to stumble out into another huge space filled with computers, light boards, and banks of monitors and flashing lights. 

The group shuffled into the middle of the room, Louis and Zayn herded along at the front. Louis jumped when Cowell walked towards them out of the shadows, Winston right behind him, having apparently levitated from the lobby. 

"As Dr. Winston was explaining when I so rudely interrupted him," Cowell continued as though he'd never been interrupted himself, "the mobile phone industry has already developed very rudimentary eye movement controls. Some of you may have noticed that your kitty cat videos automatically pause when you look away from your phone."

"Is that really a thing?" Zayn whispered. Louis shrugged in response; he'd bought his iPhone refurbished from eBay three models ago.

"That's nice enough, I suppose." Cowell rolled his eyes and gestured to the screen next to him. "But we're taking it further. Someday you'll be able to make your phone do anything you want it to—just by thinking about it."

That was pretty sick, even if it wasn't the comic book-level freaky Zayn had been hoping for. If Louis could text while frothing a latte, his life would be basically perfect. 

"We're not quite there yet, but...." Cowell paused, casually dramatic. "Would anyone like a sneak preview?"

Excited murmurs and scattered applause swirled through the crowd. Even Louis perked up a bit—getting to play with the toys, yeah, that's what he was about. 

Cowell strolled along the front row of his audience and then stopped in front of Louis. "How about you, young man? What's your name?"

Louis started to open his mouth until he realized Cowell was looking at Zayn, who gaped back at him, flummoxed. When three seconds had ticked past, Louis assumed Zayn wasn't going to answer under his own power. "His name is Zayn, and he'd be chuffed."

"All right, then. Fortunately, I rather prefer it when I get to do the talking." Cowell shrugged and clamped a hand on Zayn's shoulder to steer him toward where Winston stood next to a group of display panels. "Everyone, please welcome Zayn."

Louis' whoops cut through the polite applause, and also through Zayn's fugue. His friend sent a brief glare over his shoulder, which Louis returned with a cheery wave. Zayn had never been big on either high-tech toys or public attention, but Louis was not letting him pass up the chance to get his hands on some real sci-fi shit.

Winston took over when they reached him, standing Zayn in front of a screen displaying dozens of lights blinking on and off at seemingly random intervals. "Watch the lights," Winston instructed. "And then think about Lady Gaga."

Zayn shrugged. His shoulders stayed hunched in discomfort at all the eyes boring into him, but he leaned over to look into the screen. "Go on, Zayno!" Louis shouted and Zayn's shoulders relaxed just a bit.

Nothing happened for a long moment. Louis' own shoulders started to tense; to Zayn it must have been excruciating. He was seconds away from starting to hum "Bad Romance" himself when suddenly the song blasted out of the monitor speakers. The screen flickered twice before Gaga herself appeared on the screen, gyrating amidst her alien dancers. 

For the first time, the applause roared up enthusiastic and genuine, Louis clapping until his palms hurt. Only one jeer rose up from the back. "You really expect us to believe he did that just by thinking about it?" a man called out. "Obviously someone hit a switch somewhere."

Louis shot a dirty look in the general direction of the voice that dared to malign Zayn's accomplishment. But Cowell just chuckled and held up his hands. "There's no man behind the curtain, I promise you. Just technology. Thank you all for coming—Dr. Winston will see you downstairs to finish your tour."

A final round of applause petered out as Cowell waved and strode off, the sound giving way to the murmur of discussion and the shuffle of feet heading back to the lifts. Louis lingered, taking a last glance around as he waited for Zayn to join him. 

The room had almost emptied when Louis frowned towards where Zayn had last been—and still was, still hunched over the screen of dancing lights, staring. "Zayn?" Louis called. "Come on, mate, you can google Lady Gaga at home if you want. I don't want to miss the rest of the free food."

Zayn still didn't move. Louis' brow wrinkled. Zayn could fall asleep anywhere, but even he couldn't manage it standing up.

The lift doors whispered shut behind the last of their tour group. The hair prickled on the back of Louis' neck at the sudden stillness in the empty lab, broken only by a stuttering loop of "B-b-bad romance." Above Zayn's bowed head, Gaga's flickering image jerked back and forth in an endless aborted dance move. She gave Louis the creeps as he hastened over to his friend.

"Zayn." When Louis' hand landed on Zayn's shoulder, Zayn jumped as though Louis had snuck up on him. "Mate, all right?"

Zayn shook his head, then nodded. "Yeah, all right. What happened? Did I do it?"

"Yeah, babe." Louis kept his hand on Zayn's shoulder and gestured up at the screen. "Everyone was proper impressed. And...then they all left."

Zayn looked around the quiet lab, finally looking as weirded out as Louis felt. "I don't.... Guess they still got some bugs to work out, yeah?"

"Yeah," Louis agreed. His fingers were digging into Zayn's shoulder now. It must have hurt, but since Zayn wasn't protesting, Louis used his grip to steer Zayn back to the lifts. "Let's get back downstairs before they come arrest us for espionage or summat."

"Too many films, Tommo," Zayn scoffed as he punched the button to summon the lift. He stopped and frowned when the button lit up—and then promptly darkened again. 

They took turns jabbing at it, but the end result persisted. The button stayed dark and no sound came from the lift shaft behind the stubbornly closed doors. "Shit," Louis said at last. "They must have it locked down."

"Makes sense." Zayn stared at the button, still looking dazed from his experience. 

Louis gripped his shoulder again. "Come on. There must be a stairwell somewhere. They can't lock down the fire exits."

He followed the wall around the edge of the lab, towing Zayn with him. No stairwells or way out signs presented themselves. In fact, the wall stayed perfectly smooth, without so much as a first aid kit or inspirational kitten poster, all the way around to the back wall. 

"Maybe we should call some—" Zayn started at the exact moment Louis finally turned a corner and spotted a door.

"Or," he interrupted, pointing, "we could see where that goes."

"It's gonna be locked," Zayn muttered, which yes, was probably true. But still, Cowell had to have come from somewhere.

To his surprise, the handle gave under his hand with a soft click and the door swung open. Louis stepped through and whistled. "Zayno, I think I found the real freaky shit for you."

Zayn's chin poked over Louis' shoulder, and a second later his gasp of joy tickled Louis' ear. Louis grinned as they both took in the huge room in front of them. Now this was a proper mad laboratory, with long benches of microscopes and test tubes, and most exciting of all, enormous tanks filled with the weirdest creatures Louis had ever seen with his real eyes.

He took a step forward when Zayn nudged him, fingers digging into his sides. "I don't even know what to look at first," Zayn breathed even as he steered Louis towards a tank that turned out to be the residence of three large, two-headed snakes. 

They made their way slowly around the vast room, visiting with the other inhabitants of the lab. All of them were some version of reptile or bug, some ordinary looking, others with an oddity of size, shape, or color.

"Spiders aren't bugs," Zayn corrected idly as they stared up at the tallest freestanding tank in the center of the room. Hundreds, maybe thousands of tiny spiders swarmed around the delicate lattice structure inside the tank. 

"Beg to differ," Louis muttered with a grimace. "I'm the one what kills them at home, and they definitely bug me."

Some tiny light flickered deep inside the tank. Louis' eyes darted around, hunting for it instinctively. He caught it when it blinked on again, but before he could focus on it, another spot of light appeared higher above. 

Then another spot lit up, and then dozens more, swarming in patterns of gold and green. The spiders, Louis realized: the spiders were glowing.

"Sick," Zayn breathed out beside him. The spider-lights glinted in his wide, dark eyes. "That is so sick."

Louis started to echo him, but a sharp sting on the back of his neck made the "s" elongate into a pained hiss. He slapped at his neck and then glared at his empty hand. "Fucking ow."

Zayn scratched through the hair at the nape of Louis' neck with a grin. "Nothing there. Come on, let's get out of here. I'm getting the heebie jeebies, too."

As they found their way out, Louis scratched the spot himself and tried to ignore the weird tingle under his skin. Heebie jeebies.

***  
Hours later, far into the night, the tingling had gone far beyond the heebie jeebies. Louis had managed to ignore the burn in the knob of his neck as they wove through the remaining tour goers and ran for the bus. He kept ignoring it as they recounted their adventure to each other over and over at high volume. By the time they got kicked off the bus by the driver (who had a stick up his arse, just like several complaining passengers), the weirdness had spread down his spine.

Now Zayn was asleep, and Louis was alone in the dark with nothing to distract him from the nausea starting to build in his stomach. He curled into a ball on his bed, feeling too achy for the effort of getting under the covers. This had to be food poisoning. Fucking canapés, and he hadn't even got to eat more than one. 

Just as he had almost dulled his brain enough to sleep, a deep chill wracked his bones. He lifted his head with a groan to peer bleary-eyed at the clock. Nearly three in the morning, and he had to open tomorrow. 

Another chill gripped him, strong enough to call a spasm. He hauled himself upright, but immediately his stomach cramped so hard that he twisted around until he fell onto his side again. He wrapped his arms around himself, curling up as tightly as he could with an animal whimper. 

Eventually he managed to roll out of bed and stumble to the loo, because the only way this night could get worse would be to vomit all over himself in bed. He huddled over the toilet in the dark for ages, but got nothing for his efforts beyond more waves of discomfort that rolled somehow both deep in his bones and just under his skin. 

Kneeling on the floor was only making it worse. With no hint of relief on the horizon, he pulled himself back up and lurched toward the sink. His hand moved on autopilot to flick on the light switch—

Louis howled as light seared his eyes, beams piercing through to the back of his skull. He tried to clap his hands over his face--but he had grabbed onto the sink and his hands—his hands wouldn't fucking budge. Like he'd fucking superglued himself to it, but he hadn't, he hadn't played any pranks, there was no logical reason—

"Let go," he whimpered and pulled—

And his hands came free. He instantly groped for the light switch and plunged the loo back into darkness, panting with relief.

He started to lean his exhausted body on the sink again, but yanked his hands back just in time. Hesitantly, he brushed his fingers over his other palm. Nothing sticky met his touch, though both palms were damp with sweat. Overcome with the compulsion to scrub them, he fumbled for the tap and—

"Shit, shit, shit!" Since when was water so fucking loud? He stuck his fingers in his ears, stumbling backward until he hit the wall, but their loo was so fucking tiny that he still felt like he was stood under Niagara Falls. 

He lunged forward and managed to nudge the tap closed with his elbow. The terrible noise ceased; for a moment, Louis relaxed into the blissful silence.

Then he realized it was not silent at all. Voices murmured, just out of his earshot. Fuck, he'd woken Zayn. 

Waking Zayn never turned out well for anyone, normally, but Louis was too relieved to care. At least he wasn't alone. Zayn was always sensible. Zayn would know what to do.

He lurched right into the door knob and scrabbled for it without opening his eyes. His fingers wrapped around it and—stuck. Panic surged through his chest, making his arm jerk back to try to free himself.

The wood of the door shrieked in his ear as it splintered. He staggered back, free from the door—with the knob still stuck to his hand. "Fuck," he breathed. He was dreaming. He had to be dreaming. "Fuck, fuck, fuck. No, don't touch it, Tommo, don't fucking touch it."

With his unencumbered hand held carefully to the side, Louis tried to shake off the door handle, then tried to scrape it off against the sink. Desperation building, he crouched down and braced his bare foot against the handle on the floor and pulled as hard as he could.

He toppled over and flopped on the floor like he was trying to escape a net. A tiny sob hiccupped in his throat as his foot refused to detach from the metal handle. He teetered on the verge of hysteria. Why hadn't Zayn come to help him yet? How could he not have heard that?

His lungs started to constrict, and he had to force himself to inhale deep and slow to calm himself. He had to think. He had to concentrate—

As soon as he relaxed, his hand and foot popped free. The door knob skittered across the floor until it hit the base of the toilet and stilled. Louis sprawled on the floor, shaking.

After a few more deep breaths, suppressing his panic with steely resolve, he picked himself up and cautiously nudged the broken door open. The coolness and quiet of the corridor washed over him, though the voices were growing louder. Trust Zayn to have the telly so loud in the middle of the night. They'd have another complaint from the snarky git upstairs.

The hysteria welled up in a giggle as he tapped on Zayn's door. When Zayn failed to answer, Louis knocked much louder. On a night when he wasn't in the middle of a psychotic break, he would have just opened the door without waiting; under the circumstances, he would rather make Zayn handle the doors for the time being.

But eventually he had to risk it. He grasped the handle with just his fingertips. "Do not stick," he hissed as the handle turned in painstaking millimeters. "Don't you fucking dare."

He exhaled in gusty relief when the door finally swung up, and then winced at the blinding street lights shining through the crack in Zayn's curtains. Otherwise the room was dark and still. Zayn was a dark, still lump under the covers. Louis blinked to clear his eyes and then blinked again in confusion.

The tiny, beat-up telly on Zayn's dresser sat as silent as Zayn. All the voices Louis heard had faded to the background while he concentrated on getting in here, but he could still hear them. In his head. He was hearing voices in his head.

The first "fuck" had barely cleared his throat before he was back in his own room, buried under the covers. "Fuck," he moaned into a mouthful of duvet. "No, this is not happening. I refuse."

With all the considerable strength of his will, he pushed the voices out of his head. To his shock, they faded away to nothing, leaving his ears (and head) blessedly empty. 

He poked his head out from under the duvet and listened. All of his electronics hummed much louder in the silence, but at least they weren't speaking to him. He flopped over onto his back, exhausted with relief, desperate for sleep.

The fever and pain had diminished to a dull ache, but sleep had no interest in returning Louis' affections. His nerves remained on high alert, continually provoked by a lingering stickiness on his hand, like he'd wanked and been too lazy to wash. 

He'd meant to wank tonight, actually. The electric draw of Harry Styles had lingered in the back of his brain (or wherever his id was supposed to be) all night, zinging through him at odd moments to refresh the low-level burn of attraction that he'd never get a chance to act on.

A sharp giggle burst out like a snort, burning his throat and ricocheting inside his ears. If he had, he might have been pulling off a very different kind of knob. At the words "pull off" and "knob," his giggles turned manic because there was nothing better than a good dick pun, but seriously, thank fucking God he hadn't done it.

He started to calm down when his energy gave out, and felt like maybe he could follow it all the way down into blessed unconsciousness. He held himself as still as he could, eyes drifting shut—

And then he shot bolt upright as every nerve in his body jangled on high alert. "What," he gasped, "the fuck."

He slapped at the back of his neck where the sensation grew strongest. It felt like that spider was back on him again with about a dozen of its friends, and—oh, shit, that spider—

Sirens blared into his skull, blasting out the thought before he could pursue it. He clamped his hands over his ears and whimpered as the sound grew louder and louder. When it peaked at last and began to fade, an overwhelming compulsion urged him to follow it. Like he had to do something. Like he had to help.

Which was fucking stupid, because what was Louis going to do for someone in life-threatening circumstances? Make them a latte?

He fought down the compulsion just as the goddamn beagle that lived across the alley from them started yowling. The sound went straight down into Louis' guts and made him want to heave them out of his body. He was not having it.

Throwing the covers off, he staggered over to the window and threw it open. "Shut the fuck up, you stupid mutt!" he hollered as loud as he could (and he had been trained to project).

To his surprise, the dog's bay cut off with a confused yelp. Across the alley, a light came on in the window. Louis flinched from the brightness, but forced his eyes to adjust to it until they stopped stinging. "Fuck you, he's pure bred!" he heard just as he slammed his own window shut and wobbled back to his bed.

***  
"Mate, you up? We're so fucking late." Zayn poked his head around Louis' door and frowned. "Didn't you sleep? You look like shit."

"Cheers, man," Louis croaked. He tried to lift his head from the pillow, but gave up before the muscles in his neck agreed to engage. Zayn had slept right through the most traumatic night of Louis' life. He didn't deserve Louis' full gaze.

Zayn had disappeared anyway, shuffling back down the corridor. Louis heard the shuffling stop and began a slow count in his head. He got to eight before—

"Louis? Why is there a hole in the loo door?"

It was going to be a long day.

***  
TBC


	2. Foundations

When he let Zayn drag him out of their flat, Louis could not have imagined how long the day would be by eight that morning. He was a mess, a person-sized disaster with a bad attitude and a brand-new persecution complex.

"What is wrong with you?" Zayn hissed as he crouched down with Louis to pick up the coins Louis had just sent flying across the floor out of his shaking hand. "Are you tripping? Tell me you aren't tripping, mate."

"Of course I'm not tripping," Louis hissed back and shoved the change into Zayn's hand. "You just startled me with the grinder."

Zayn shook his head, and Louis could not blame him for not buying it; normally neither of them really heard the whirring and grinding of the machines anymore. And Louis had got most of his sensory issues under control. The grinder had been a slip-up, an accidental avalanche inside his head.

Someone cleared their throat at the counter above them, and Louis rolled his eyes.

"I'll explain later," he conceded and stood up to face his next customer. His canned greeting froze on his tongue.

"Hi," Harry Styles said with a wide, beautiful smile. Like yesterday, his trademark hair hid beneath a soft knit hat, his distinctive tattoos beneath a casual jacket indistinguishable from any of the students who lived in this neighbourhood. He looked like a secret: private and delicious, just for Louis.

"Hi?" Harry tried again, and Louis realized he was gaping. He had never expected to see Harry again (in person, at least) and here was Louis, unshowered, unshaven, and vaguely cadaverous. 

"Hi." It sounded more like a very unattractive croak than a word. Louis cleared his throat. "Hello, H."

Harry's smile widened even further. "I came back last night, but there was just some bloke here who didn't know anything about making a really girly drink."

Louis' sluggish brain couldn't decide whether to laugh or wince. His face contorted in some terribly alluring combination of the two. "Right. Sorry. Me and—" 

He started to point to Zayn, only to realize that Zayn had vanished, leaving him alone with Harry and the crowd of commuters that were just starting to jostle through the door and into the queue. "Well, anyway, had to skive off a bit early for something I forgot. But I'd have stayed if I'd known you were actually coming back."

A tiny, adorable frown furrowed Harry's brow. "Of course I came back. I had a treat receipt."

The deadpan remark took a moment to filter through Louis' mind. Then he snorted with the effort of suppressing his answering giggle. "Unfortunately, treat receipts are only good the same day, but I'll make an exception this one time, since I misled you."

"No, no, I don't mind paying full price," Harry said, but Louis waved him off and rang up the discount. 

"All right, now let's get you the girliest drink known to our crumbling civilization." Louis' flirtatious smile usually came without effort, but he felt it tighten into a rictus when his senses started going out of whack again. Behind Harry, two Scottish women had struck up a conversation, and it blared in and out of Louis' oversensitive ears like they were speaking through a semi-functional megaphone. 

"Are you all right?" Harry asked, brow furrowed again with concern.

"Fine, fine." Louis shook off the discomfort and reached for a mixing cup. "All right. Obviously we need to start off with a white mocha base."

"Oh, obviously." Harry's smile returned, and Louis tried not to let it fluster him again. "Good thing you didn't try to use regular mocha or I'd doubt you knew your business."

"Bang out of order that'd be," Louis agreed with a solemn nod. After a moment, he realised he had been staring at Harry again while clutching the cup. "Right. Now, I know you're a fan of the coconut, which is good, because—"

Automatically he started to switch the cup from his left hand to his right so he could reach for the coconut syrup. But the cup refused to switch, stuck like glue to his left hand. A string of panicked profanity went through his head as he tried to tug it free without alerting Harry anything was wrong.

He gave up and turned awkwardly to reach the syrup with his right hand. "Coconut," he muttered, groping for his train of thought. But it had left the station without him. 

Harry moved over to the pick-up counter to get a better view. When he frowned again, Louis realized he was still adding coconut and Harry, it seemed, was not quite that much of a fan of the stuff. He jerked the bottle away and Harry had to dodge a jet of syrup sailing past his head. 

Louis inhaled sharply and turned on his heel. If he didn't acknowledge it, maybe Harry would forget it happened at all. Someone at the counter ahem'd softly as though to remind him that he had a queue of other (clearly less important) customers waiting. He seized the excuse to put the mixing cup down, coaxing it off his hand as casually as possible.

He rang up two more orders, which he then ignored as he swivelled back towards the only customer who mattered. Harry's confusion lightened into a hopeful smile as Louis looked at him.

Louis pointed to him. "Girly drink. Haven't forgotten you, no worries."

Harry's smile wavered, and Louis silently cursed himself for sounding like a knob. He seized a clean cup and started mixing again. "Right, we covered the coconut. White chocolate."

"Good, good," Harry encouraged. He shifted his weight between his booted feet and cast a quick glance over to the other end of the counter. People were starting to squint at him in a way that did not bode well for Harry's incognito state. Shit. Louis' chances were rapidly evaporating, and what coherent thought he had left was going with them.

What else had he imagined putting into a drink for Harry? "Raspberry? You like raspberry, right?" Louis started laughing, harsh from the rawness in his throat, before Harry could do more than open his mouth. "What am I saying, haha, of course you like raspberry."

Harry closed his mouth again and watched with wide eyes as Louis grabbed the raspberry syrup and upturned it over the mixing cup. For a moment, nothing happened. Then the syrup shifted within the bottle with a horrifying squelch and began to ooze out of the spout with a consistency better suited to one of Zayn's comics than a drink meant for humans.

"Oookay." Louis hastily pulled the bottle upright and chucked it into the bin. "I guess no one's ordered anything raspberry for a while. But look! I can put strawberry in it. Just as good?"

He did not dare even look at Harry's face, just made a lunge for the blender while he still had something marginally drinkable in the cup. As soon as he flipped the switch, the screech of the blades chopping through the ice spiked through his head. He hunched over the counter, trying to shake the pain out of his ears. Even through the thunderous grinding, he could still hear the grumbling of his other customers and Harry's soft, resigned sigh.

Sweat drenched his fringe by the time the blender stopped. His hands shook as he poured it out, slopping thick pink goop over the side of the cup. His whipped cream application proved just as haphazard, but finally the lid snapped onto the cup and Louis smacked it, triumphant, down onto the counter in front of Harry. 

"Sorry, few hinks in the process, but I promise this drink will be sufficiently girly even for your refined tastes." Louis grinned at Harry, relief (or perspiration) glowing out of every pore.

Harry returned a weak smile, but gamely reached for the drink. Louis let go and stood back—except the letting go part wasn't happening. The cup moved a few centimetres back on the counter with his hand.

Horror-adrenaline flooded his system. Harry's smile actually grew a little, as though he thought Louis was being flirtatious, playing a little game of chasey-chasey with his Frankenstein frappuccino. As though he hadn't realized Louis was living an actual, genuine nightmare.

Harry's fingertips brushed over Louis' knuckles, fond and forgiving. Then his big warm hand closed around the cup, half over Louis' fingers, and pulled. The pressure started off gentle, trying to ease the cup out of Louis' grip. Then Harry's smile wavered and he pulled harder. Louis jerked forward a little, but the cup did not budge.

They stared at each other for a long, long, long moment. Louis' clever brain rang with emptiness. There was no possible explanation for this. The master of excuses stood defeated at last.

"Louis?" Harry tugged again at the cup. "Could I... I'd love to taste it?"

"Right, just—a bit embarrassing this," Louis stammered. "My hand... I think some of the syrup...."

"Your hand's stuck to the cup?" The unspoken _...seriously?_ withered Louis' manhood for what he would go ahead and assume would be the rest of his life.

"Yes," he gritted out. "Yes, it is. Maybe if you just pulled a little harder....?"

Harry's smile had completely flattened. He pulled a little harder, and then a lot harder.

Louis pulled in the opposite direction. He willed his hand to just unstick already. And then it did, and he wanted to take it back immediately.

He could only watch the slow-motion disaster unfold as Harry reeled backward from the sudden release. He watched as the lid flew off in a different direction, unleashing a wave of frappuccino to crash over Harry's shirt—and his face and his brow and his hair. 

They both stood frozen, jaws agape, staring down at the mess all over Harry's person. Louis' heart had gone to hide somewhere in his stomach. He had to say something, anything, but his numb lips refused to move.

At the other end of the shop, a camera shutter clicked loud into the silence.

Slowly Harry looked up at him, eyelashes clumped with frappuccino and eyes wet with something else. "You know," he said softly, then had to stop and work his throat before he spoke again. "You know, if you weren't interested, you could have just said so."

"Harry—"

"I can take no for an answer." Harry swallowed hard, drawing himself up and setting his shoulders. "You didn't need to make fun of me."

"No, no, Harry—" Louis choked out. But the door was already closing behind him, and Harry did not look back, wiping his face on his sleeve as he strode past the window and out of Louis' life.

"Was that Harry Styles?" a girl whispered, snapping Louis out of his daze.

"No," a woman snapped before Louis could do it himself. "Of course it wasn't."

Louis knew that voice: it belonged to neurotic Louise. A witness, how marvellous. He leaned on the counter, not caring if he stuck, and closed his eyes.

A few seconds later the staff door squealed open and Zayn ran out to handle the remaining customers. Louis stayed where he was until the last person had been hustled out the door with their drink and an extra voucher for their trouble.

Then Zayn's soft footsteps shuffled up behind him and Zayn's warm hand fell on his shoulder. "Louis? What happened?"

He had been breathing so shallowly that drawing in enough air to speak almost hurt. "You fucked off, and it turns out I can't function like a competent human being without you."

"I'm sorry!" Zayn's hand tightened in an apologetic squeeze. "I saw Harry and figured you'd make more headway without me hanging around. I didn't realize we were about to get a rush, you know I'd never leave you alone for that."

Louis did know that, and knew he was an even more wretched waste of space for even suggesting it. "It wasn't you. It wasn't the rush. It wasn't even Harry."

"Seriously, babe, are you all right?"

Slowly, Louis turned around. He met Zayn's concerned frown, opened his mouth, and then gave up and slid down to the floor. As Zayn crouched down beside him, Louis buried his face in his knees to avoid facing Zayn's alarm.

"No," he mumbled into his jeans. "There's something wrong with me, Zayner. There's something really wrong."

***

Harry's eyes still burned with humiliation when he stalked past Paul and into the rehearsal studio. He kept them fixed on the floor as he walked to avoid both the gazes of his co-workers and the guilt from seeing them shy away from him in surprise at his mood. Harry rarely got into moods at work—or at least he rarely let them show.

The worst was Niall, whom he could not avoid even if he wanted to. Niall looked up from tuning his guitar with a grin, eager for good news. Harry dodged his expectant look, slumping down on his usual stool and reaching for the day's schedule left lying on one of Niall's amps. 

All the words on it might have been Cyrillic for the sense they made as they danced around in nonsense patterns, coming in and out of focus. Niall wasn't saying anything, but Harry knew that wouldn't last long. His back started to hurt from the tension of waiting for the other shoe to drop.

"No coffee?" Niall said at last, and Harry let out a long gust of breath.

"There's always plenty at catering," he muttered to the cryptic paper in his hands. 

"There's also plenty on your shirt. Come on, Haz. What happened? Was your boy still not there?"

Harry squeezed his eyes shut. "Oh, he was there. But he made it incredibly clear that he's not going to be my boy. Guess I should have got the message when he wasn't there when I went back yesterday."

"Oh, that motherfucking cuntbag. What did he do? Tell Uncle Niall everything. I'm going to go over there and beat the shit out of him, and I want to make sure I'm screaming the right kind of profanity while I do it."

A tiny laugh huffed out of him before he could stop it, so he gave up trying to have a proper strop, opened his eyes, and let himself droop until he looked as pathetic as he felt. "He seemed surprised to see me, but like, happy surprised? I flirted a little and he totally flirted back. I mean, I know when someone's flirting with me, don't I?"

Niall levelled a solemn look at him. "Harry, everyone flirts with you. Literally everyone. My mum flirts with you. My _dad_ flirts with you."

"It must be involuntary, then, because everything went to shit after that." Haltingly, Harry recounted everything Louis had done while making Harry's drink, the slow descent down the rabbit hole that had ended with Harry covered in what (if he could be frank) smelled like a disgusting frappuccino. 

When he finished, Niall got up and hugged him, sort of sideways to avoid contamination. He sat back down and hummed in thought. "I mean, that sounds like it really sucked, but maybe the guy was just having a really bad day?"

For a second, Harry battled an intense desire to agree with Niall's interpretation. Then he shook his head. "No, like, yesterday he was making fun of people who like coconut, and today he poured about a litre of it into my drink. Then he stopped in the middle and went to help someone else. He came back and acted like he forgot I was there. And he went on about how of course I'm someone who would like raspberry, and then he started saying how no one else, like, ever ordered it."

"And then he wrestled you for the cup and made sure you got it all over you." Niall nodded slowly. "All right. He's a bag of dicks. We're going to take him out."

"That's all I wanted to do in the first place," Harry mumbled. "He liked me yesterday, before he knew who I was. I know he did."

"If he stopped liking you just because you sing some really excellent pop music with an outstanding backing band, then he doesn't fucking deserve to make a girly drink for you."

Harry shrugged. "Why does shit like this keep happening, though? Why can't I find anyone who can see past all the bullshit and just see me?"

"Karma," Niall answered, and Harry looked up with a frown. "You already got the best person in the world as your best mate, so you're going to be paying that off for a while, logically speaking."

"I guess," Harry said and had to smile a little bit. 

Niall nudged his shoulder against Harry’s. "Hey. You're pretty much the best person I've ever met, even without all the money and the sexy band. You just got to find someone who deserves all of that."

"Yeah. I am pretty great, aren't I?" Harry grinned, trying not to be too watery about it. Of course Niall was right; plenty of fish in the sea and all of that. Yet somehow in the last twenty-four hours, his heart got set on a shaggy-haired barista who called out bigots and made little girls smile. 

Niall grinned back, but the smile fell off his face when he looked toward the other end of the open rehearsal space. "Ah, great, your twinsie is back today. When the fuck did he start having opinions about things?"

Harry followed his gaze to where Magee bustled around, talking to Lee, the stage director, then the lighting people, then back to Lee. "Well, I didn't ask him to," he muttered. His manager was not high on the list of things he wanted to deal with today.

But here he came anyway, making a beeline for Harry as though drawn by his irritation. "Hello, Harry!" he boomed as he approached.

"Good morning, Mr. Magee," Harry replied, politely passive-aggressive. "I hope you're well this morning."

"Hello, Harry!" Niall chirped.

Magee did not even look at Niall, already talking as he came up and put an arm around Harry's shoulders. "So Harry, I was just having a bit of a chat with Lee, and we both agree that we need to build in some more fan interaction into the show."

Harry stiffened under Magee's grasping arm. "Oh, yeah? What exactly did you have in mind?"

Magee's arm tightened into an affectionate vice. "See, I told everyone you'd be on board with it."

"Well," Harry said, stiffening his shoulders further against the assault, "I do pride myself on my fan interaction."

Free from any worry that Magee would look at his face, Niall was doing his level best to combust the man with the heat of his glare. They all prided themselves on their interactions with the fans, from Harry to the band to the security team. 

"Which is why I had the inspiration to add a regular bit, something that can become your signature, so to speak." Magee finally released him, only to ruffle his hair with the heavy hand of someone who had read about jaunty hair ruffling, but hadn't realized that no one ever did that in real life. "Right now we're thinking something with selfies. I'll work out the details with Lee and Paul. You don't need to worry about it for a moment."

Harry's jaw clenched, hard enough that he could only nod. Fortunately, Magee didn't seem to require his input at all. He was already looking at his phone; Harry held himself still and waited for him to wander off and find some other aspect of Harry's show that needed improvement.

He startled when Magee's arm fell over his shoulders again. "Let's have some practice," Magee said and held up his phone while leaning in until Harry could feel too much of him pressed against his side.

Automatically, Harry forced his mouth to curve upward. It felt more like a grimace than a smile, like it usually did when he was cornered into selfies. No one had ever noticed, and he doubted Magee would, either. The flash went off, making him jump again when it seared his eyes.

"See you later, Harry," Magee chortled while Harry tried to blink the bright afterimage out of his vision.

Rubbing at his eyes, he mumbled something he hoped Magee would take as the expected response. It must have sufficed, because the man was gone when Harry could finally make out his surroundings again.

Niall was still glaring in the direction Magee must have gone. "Choreographing your fan interactions? Like you need his help? What the fuck, man?"

Harry rubbed his eyes again so he wouldn't have to look at Niall. "Apparently I'm just not good enough for anybody today."

Before the sniffle lurking in his sinuses could finish off his embarrassment, Niall's arms closed around him again. Niall hugged him harder this time, squeezing out all of Harry's self-pity until he relaxed, comforted that at least one person in his life put no conditions on their love.

***  
"Louis? Louis, where are you—oh, for fuck's sake." 

As soon as the lock clicked on his bedroom door, Louis felt bad for shutting Zayn out. But the relief at finally being alone for the first time in this horrible, exhausting, total shit pile of a day overrode the guilt. 

At least his gruelling coffee shop imprisonment had forced him to gain some basic control over his sensory (and sticky palm) problems. He no longer flinched from normal sounds, felt nauseated by smells no one else could smell, and he hadn't stuck to anything since lunch. 

And his room was quiet, so blissfully quiet once he tuned out Zayn's grumbling. He flung himself down on the twisted mess of sheets on his bed and let himself breathe.

Breathing lost its novelty after a few minutes. He rolled over far enough to grab his laptop from the floor and hauled it up onto his chest. He had to figure out what the fuck was happening to him. Surely Google would know.

A search for "sticky hands" only brought up children's party favours. He contemplated his day, and then typed in "sticky hands whacked out senses ruining my fucking life." 

The results were much more random, but not any more helpful. He paged through them, heart sinking. If Google didn't know, he was fucked.

Just as he was about to close the page, a few words from one of the last links caught his eye: superhuman eyesight developed after....

Heart pounding, he clicked and started reading the long message board thread. There was someone in America, a Special Forces sniper, who had come back from Afghanistan with massively enhanced sight and hearing after a weird experience in a cave. Within a few replies, the thread evolved into a discussion of the recent rash of costumed vigilantes fighting crime in several large American cities, many of whom had extraordinary abilities.

Fucking superheroes. 

These superpowered vigilantes had been showing up, usually in waves, decades apart, since the beginning of the last century. They inspired the comic books Zayn and Louis had grown up reading and that Zayn had always wanted to create.

Not a single one had ever shown up in Britain, let alone sodding Manchester. Louis could not possibly be the first.

And yet.... He followed link after link, searching for lists of abilities and the origins for hero after hero. None of them quite matched up with his own experiences, but the general pattern was clear. His pulse raced harder as he sat up and set his laptop aside. 

Right. Extreme sensitivity to light, sound, smells, and other sensory input usually heralded the development of super senses. Louis laughed, breathless and disbelieving. "Super senses," he muttered. "Fuck me."

He closed his eyes and tried to hear something. For a moment nothing happened; he had stifled it down so hard during the day that even his own voice sounded muffled. Then the block shattered, and unfiltered noise flooded into his ears. He clamped his hands over them and cringed, trying to focus his hearing in one place and filter out everything else.

Zayn. He couldn't hear Zayn yet, but somehow he could sense him, a warm presence as familiar as the sight of his face or the sound of his voice. Slowly he tried to focus his hearing in Zayn's direction. 

Sound wavered in and out of his ears, but then he caught a few words. "—no, Jay, he's fine, really."

Zayn's voice drew him in like a magnet. He was talking to Louis' mum, and Louis could hear her as clearly as he could Zayn. "All right, love. It's just not like him not to return my calls, so I was worried."

"Nah, just a bit of tummy trouble and a long day at work. He probably let his phone die. I'll get him to call you."

"No, no, if he's not feeling well, just leave him be. But thank you, love. Are you doing well?"

"Yeah, yeah, I—" 

A strange tingling broke his concentration—only not strange. Louis had felt the same sensation last night, building in the back of his neck and washing down his spine. He shivered with incomprehensible dread. Somewhere, something was wrong, but there was nothing he could do about it.

He distracted himself by testing his eyesight (nicely telescopic, not that there was much outside his window to look at) and then accidentally testing his strength (he probably didn't need that steel bar in his window anyway). 

His sticky hands proved just as unreliable in practice. When he concentrated, he could pick stuff up with just the flat palm of his hand. Putting things down again took much more concentration. He sort of got the hang of letting go (one ruined textbook and a broken lamp later).

If sticky hands were supposed to be a superpower, they were kind of a shit deal in Louis' opinion. What the fuck was he supposed to do with them? He'd make a better pickpocket than a hero. Although....

He looked down at his palms and then up at the blank wall where he had never quite got around to hanging his Beckham poster. Well, why the hell not?

At the last second he remembered to toe his shoes off. Then he took a deep breath and slapped his hands onto the wall. "Stick," he whispered. 

They stuck. Heart pounding again, he peeled his right hand away, stuck it higher, and used it to pull himself further up the wall. As his feet left the ground, he scrabbled at the wall with his toes until they stuck and stabilized him. 

Slowly, he crawled up the wall—he crawled up the wall. "Fuck," he breathed, totally buzzing. He'd never been able to pull up his own body weight in PE class at school, but this felt no more difficult than crawling across the floor.

Except that he was _crawling up the wall._

When he reached the top, he craned his neck backwards to examine the expanse of the ceiling behind him. The only real marketable feature of this flat was the high ceiling that made the rooms feel bigger than they were. Common sense dictated he should carefully climb back down to solid ground.

Louis had never been much of a fan of common sense. He always had been a fan of high places.

He reached up and grabbed onto the ceiling. A quick, instinctive scurry brought him the rest of the way into a glorious upside down world. He laughed out loud and crawled further out until he sprawled over the middle of the ceiling like some sort of spider god reigning over his kingdom.

"Louis?" The loud rap of Zayn's knuckles on the door startled Louis out of his state of ecstasy. 

"Shit," he yelped as one foot slipped. He clung tight to the smooth surface that suddenly felt slippery. "Not a good time!"

"What, are you wanking or something?"

"No, I'm not wanking, you dumbwit!" He tried to ignore the thundering noise as Zayn kept pounding on the door. He had to get down from here, but his hands refused to unstick enough to move either forward or back. All he could do was cling like a cat up a tree.

"Seriously, mate," Zayn huffed eventually. "You're freaking me out today. Don't make me break down the door."

"Actually," Louis called with a very heroic quaver in his voice, "you've had worse ideas."

The knocking stopped. "Seriously?" Zayn said after a moment.

Louis tried one more time to continue his badass crawl across the ceiling, but his hands wouldn't budge, cemented to the ceiling. He tried to concentrate on unsticking; a surge of panic stopped him. If he unstuck, he would fall, or so his brain shrieked at him.

He closed his eyes. He was not getting out of this without Zayn. "Yes, please?"

After another moment, Zayn heaved a noisy sigh, but he didn't ask questions and that was why he was Louis' best friend. A loud thump rattled the door, then another. "Ow," Zayn said. "We really need another friend who can break down doors."

Louis winced. Probably not the time to remind Zayn about the loo door.

Zayn gave the door knob one last rattle before walking away muttering to himself in Urdu. Louis could hear him rummaging in the junk cupboard. When he came back, Louis had a few seconds to wonder what he was about before the screech of their electric screwdriver assaulted his ears.

He had just got his hearing back under control when the screeching stopped and the door rattled again. Louis craned his neck back in time to see the door—not open, exactly. As usual, brain had triumphed over muscle: Zayn had taken the whole thing right off its hinges.

Zayn oofed as he wrestled the door out of the way, and then stepped around it into Louis' room. "Louis? Where the fuck are you?" He looked around, brows drawing together. "Fair warning, if you've locked yourself in the closet, I'm leaving you in there until I've stopped laughing. Which will probably be never."

"Up here," Louis called and smiled weakly as Zayn slowly lifted his head up—and up and up. "Hey."

Zayn's jaw looked as unhinged as the door as he gaped up at Louis. He sputtered a couple of times before words came out. "What the fuck? Holy shit, Louis, you're—no, seriously, mate, what the fuck?"

"Remember what I was telling you this morning about my hands sticking to things?" Louis tried for a casual laugh. "Well, I started googling about superpowers and things and... well...."

And that was when Zayn started laughing. Louis closed his eyes again and thunked his forehead against the ceiling to wait it out. 

"Ya Allah," Zayn gasped about three minutes after he had toppled over into the door jam. "When you said you were sticking to things, I thought—I mean—"

"Yeah, I know what you thought," Louis groused. "Now get me down from here." 

"Me get you down? You're the one who got yourself up there."

"And now I can't get down. If I move, I'm gonna fall." Louis squeezed his eyes shut tighter. "Go ahead and say it."

"You're like a cat up a fucking tree, mate."

Louis sighed. "There we go. Feel better?"

Zayn didn't answer, and Louis opened his eyes and let his head fall back to see what he was doing. He had to crane his head back further to find his flatmate, pacing a circle directly below him and craning his own neck to look up at Louis.

"Quit staring at me arse," Louis said just to break the silence.

"I have exactly zero percent interest in your arse." Zayn squinted up at him and tilted his head. "Though this is not a bad position for it to get stuck in. Maybe I should go find Harry."

"This is not the time to talk about Harry," Louis snapped. Though if a good look at his arse got Harry to forgive him, Louis might be convinced to hang around for as long as it took. "Now can you get me down?"

"Actually...." Zayn paused, and then nodded. "Yes. Be right back."

"Don't you dare leave—" But Zayn was already out the door (what was left of it) and then Louis heard the front door open and slam shut. He wanted to follow Zayn's footsteps with his new abilities to hear where he was going, but his panic would not spare the concentration.

So he just hung. From the ceiling. Feeling ever so heroic. Until Zayn returned lugging the tall stepladder their landlord used to change the overhead lightbulbs.

"Right, this should do it." Zayn wrestled the ladder upright and shifted it around beneath Louis until he was satisfied with the angle. "Be right up."

As soon as Zayn's hand touched his back, Louis relaxed. "Just tell me what to do," he mumbled.

"Can I get that in writing?" Zayn joked. "All right, you're going to let your right leg go first, yeah? Don’t worry, I've got you."

Zayn stood low enough on the ladder that he had to stretch up to touch Louis, but Louis still felt more secure now that he was there. He concentrated on letting just one foot free, confident that if he fell, at least he and Zayn would die together.

"Yeah! That's it." Zayn gripped his ankle and guided it down until Louis' toes brushed a ladder step. "Now the other one, before you tear something."

Louis obeyed and soon had both feet on the ladder. Zayn guided him down a few steps until he felt stable and then grasped him around his legs to steady him while he finally let his hands unstick. They came away with sticky threads connecting to the ceiling until they broke.

"Ew," Zayn said, so Louis rubbed his sticky hand all over Zayn's face. 

A half hour later, Louis was clean and filled with tea, and they sat at their rickety kitchen table going through the results of Louis' internet hunting. "This is sick, mate." Zayn devoured another article about a vigilante in the States, wide eyes glowing with the reflection of the screen. "So fucking sick. You're gonna be such a badass."

"Yeah?" Louis had started to brighten from the tea infusion and Zayn's enthusiasm. "So you really think all this weird shit means something?"

"It's got to," Zayn insisted. "When was the last time Britain had a masked vigilante helping people? Fucking Robin Hood, that's when. We need someone to fight the power for the common man."

Louis had always rather imagined himself getting to be one of the ones in power, but he nodded slowly as his worldview shifted. "Maybe," he conceded. "But how am I going to help people with good eyesight and sticking to things?"

"You got to develop your powers, obviously." Zayn rolled his eyes even as Louis' heart skipped a beat at the thought of having actual 'powers.' "Mate, it's like you never read a comic before, I swear."

Then Zayn reached over and slid the lopsided, half-glazed ceramic vase that had been their centrepiece since they moved in towards the edge of the table. And then over the edge. 

"Shit!" Louis yelled in panic as it plunged towards the floor. His oldest baby sister had made that vase for him years ago, and it was one of the most precious things Louis owned even though no flower stem would ever fit through its misshapen neck.

"Shit," Zayn breathed a second later, staring not at the vase but at Louis' hands. "Shit. I wasn't expecting that."

Louis followed Zayn's gaze down to his own outstretched hands, which cradled Lottie's vase like an actual baby. The pottery was intact, but covered in sticky webbing like he just retrieved it from an attic nobody had cleaned for a few hundred years. "What," he said, the rest of the profanity fizzling out, smothered by overwhelming confusion.

Zayn reached over and gently detached the vase from Louis hands. He placed it back on the table, and then lunged forward and grabbed Louis by the wrists. "Shit," he repeated yet again, examining Louis' hands. "That is literally the sickest thing I've ever seen in my life."

"What even happened?" Louis demanded. His wrists ached a little, and he pulled them from Zayn's grip. "I don't even remember moving."

"You didn't really move." Zayn gestured with wide, incomprehensible motions. "You just—fuck, I don't even know what you did, but this, like, stuff just shot out of your hand or—"

"My wrist," Louis murmured, rubbing at the one that ached the most.

"Yeah, it looked like your wrist. And you just grabbed the vase with it." Zayn tipped his chair back, cackling in glee. "Just like—zap!"

"And what if I hadn't, you asshole," Louis demanded, though he was starting to grin. "That's Lottie's vase."

Zayn just grinned back at him. "I had a hundred percent confidence in you. Now come on, let's figure out what else you can do."

***  
"Half-caf non-fat soy latte. Venti."

"Of course, a venti," Louis said as he scribbled the order in shorthand on a venti cup and handed it off to Zayn. "Can't fit that much fun into a smaller cup, can you?"

The man hesitated, unsure if Louis was taking the piss or not, then paid. Louis high fived his inner Tommo. He was back, baby. Now he just needed Harry to come back so Louis could (apologize profusely and then) wow him.

"Do you have the pumpkin spice lattes in yet?"

"Madam," Louis sighed. "When it's PSL season, believe me, you will know it. Everyone will know it. Even the Pope will know it; I understand we're intending to send a telegram to the Vatican, just in case."

She gave an obligatory chuckle and her usual order. Smile, cup, card, wipe, receipt, smile. "Next—oh, hullo, Louise."

"G'morning, Louis." She gave him a sympathetic look; it startled him in contrast to her usual tense demeanour. "My usual, please, and an iced caramel macchiato, extra sweet."

She had never ordered two drinks before. Louis raised his eyebrows, but grinned as he reached for the cups. "Double fisting it this morning, are we? Late night?"

The old tension flickered across her face before the sympathetic look settled back onto her features. "The second one is for Harry. He... didn't have time to come in this morning."

Louis froze, marker poised over the second cup. "You know Harry?" he croaked.

Zayn caught a look at his face and then elbowed him away from the till, taking the cup and marker out of his stiff fingers. "Go on, have a chat," he told Louis under his breath.

Louise followed in parallel as Louis sidled down the counter. "Yeah, I work with him. Hair and make-up, innit."

He swallowed and let his hands start the mechanics of making her drink. "Ah. Yeah. Good of you to cover for him yesterday, after I apparently drove him out of Starbucks forever."

"He's just in a bit of a mither." She leaned her arms on the drink pick-up counter and watched him splash the soy milk into her coffee. "He'll get over it, you'll see."

Louis snapped the lid onto her drink. Then he picked up the cup for Harry's macchiato and stared down at it. "He has every right to be furious," he said. "I just don't want him to think that I—that it was anything to do with him."

"I saw what happened. You were just having a really, really bad morning." She shook her head and sipped at her drink. Louis waited for the inevitable complaints, but she just continued on. "Look, H is under a massive load of pressure, doing what he does. Being who he is."

"I know—"

"No, you don't know. It's all right, you'll figure it out. But he's sensitive about all that. How people treat him and all. Maybe a little too much, but he's got reasons. Give him a bit of time."

Louis nodded, still staring down at the cup. He'd already understood most of that, but hearing it come from someone who knew Harry made it feel more concrete. Like something he could do something about, if he could figure out how. "Right. I'll give him time. And I'll also give him the best fucking caramel macchiato he's ever tasted."

"That's the spirit," Louise cheered, and he looked up with a surprised smile. It was the first time he had ever heard her laugh. 

***

"Okay, then. Imma go over here now." Niall had his hands up, backing away slowly, and pointed one finger towards nothing in particular. Then he turned and skedaddled, pointedly.

Harry sighed, blowing away the apology that had already died on his lips. He was cranky and uncaffeinated, two states directly related to each other for reasons he didn't really want to think about. Niall did not deserve to take the brunt of Harry's rejection angst. 

A better target currently stood on the other side of the warehouse, harassing the lighting director again. Harry narrowed his eyes and wished he was the sort of person who could pull off a menacing growl. Magee was here again, bright and early, and Harry still had no idea why.

"Thought this might help your mood."

Harry smelled the iced coffee Lou held out to him even before he finished registering the words from above him. He smiled and reached for it, but faltered when he saw the familiar green logo on the side of the cup. 

"Go on, it won't bite you." Lou rolled her eyes and shoved the cup at him until he took it. "And yes, he made it. Give it a chance this time, yeah?"

Under her raised eyebrows, he tried a hesitant sip. Caramel sweetness washed over his tongue, and he could not bite back the sound of pleasure in time to keep Lou from smirking. Harry cleared his throat. "Glad he still knows how to make a good drink for someone."

She hip checked his shoulder with a cluck of admonition. "You should give him a chance, too. Don't let one accident ruin a good thing."

"Accident," he muttered, but pulled another sip of macchiato. He meant to seem defiant; he had a feeling he looked sulky at best.

Lou patted him on his head and sipped her own coffee as she turned to wander over to the style and wardrobe section. "He knew that one was for you," she called back over her shoulder. “He said it was going to be the best one he ever made.”

Harry looked down at the cup in his hands with surprise. It looked different, knowing that the abbreviations along the side were in Louis' handwriting, marked for Harry. And yes, there was a simple "H" next to them, the barest of personal touches. 

He bit his lip. It might be possible that he had overreacted. Or maybe this was just Louis doing his job, now that Harry was not there in his face to make things awkward. 

"Well, hello, Harry!" The voice boomed from above him, making Harry flinch before he could hide his instinctive disgust. "When did you sneak in?"

Harry looked up with a wan smile. "Hello, Harry," he mumbled and set his coffee aside before standing up to get back to work.

***

Work was not in the cards for Louis today. Every time he had to make an iced coffee (and it was a warm day, the last gasp of summer, so he had to make a lot of them) he stared down at the cup and wondered if he had made Harry's right. If Harry would taste the apology in it and come back to give him another chance. If Harry would even drink it at all or just bin it as soon as he realized who made it.

When Harry was not distracting him, his burgeoning superpowers did. Little Louis Tomlinson from Donny, a fucking superhero. He could not keep his lips from curling with pleasure at the thought, even though he still had no idea what he was supposed to do with this mix of strange abilities.

He startled when Zayn took the empty cup from his hand and nudged him with his elbow. "Just go on break already, would you? I can tell you're dying to go stick to something."

Louis looked up and saw they were down to just one customer. "You sure? I can wait."

"Nah, just go." Zayn reached for the ice scoop and waved him off. "Just don't try anything too amazing until I can watch."

Louis grinned and scooted out the back before Zayn could change his mind. He shucked his apron, not looking where he tossed it as he slipped out into the alley behind the shop. 

He took a moment to enjoy a breath of freedom from the smell of coffee and the sound of mellow world music. Normally this was the moment he would start craving a cigarette, but his mind brushed the thought aside the moment his eyes focused on the blank stretch of brick in front of him. He walked up to it as though entranced and tilted his head to follow it up three stories until brick gave way to grey sky.

"Okay, hands." He held them up, palms skimming just above the brick. His skin prickled as though his palms were already trying to adhere to the wall. "Don't let me down."

With a final breath of anticipation, he pressed his hands to the wall. They felt no different from normal, but when he pulled himself up off the ground, they held him easily. His trainers gripped well enough to propel him upward, and up he went.

"Holy shit," he breathed as he crawled up the wall, even easier than it had been the night before in his bedroom. "Since when have I had upper body strength? Ha!"

When he reached the top, he pulled himself over the edge and flopped onto his back, laughing madly. His heels kicked against the wall with joy and he spread his arms out as he cackled up into the sky, which suddenly seemed so much closer. 

He got to his feet after a few minutes and stood, hands on hips, to survey his city. It...did not look like much from here, as the building was not very tall. Louis frowned, feeling less heroic and a bit peeved about it.

The building across the way stood several stories taller. Louis crossed to the other side of the roof and squinted up at it. He jumped up and down a few times; his enhanced strength and agility got him some pretty impressive air (and he had already been naturally bouncy), but probably not enough to literally leap a tall building in a single bound. 

"What would a radioactive spider do?" he muttered. As soon as the words hit the air, something twitched under the thin skin of his wrist. He grimaced and flexed his hands. When he brought his right hand up to examine it, his arm jerked away from him just as it had done last night when Zayn tried to break Lottie's vase.

Pure instinct guided his throw as the strand of pure spider silk unfurled from his wrist and stuck to the wall of the opposite building. He grabbed the end as it detached from him and gaped at the thin line glistening in the faint autumn sun. 

"Okay." His own voice sounded faint in his ears, but the silken line felt strong in his hand despite its thinness. "I think I can work with this."

Giving it a last tug to test the strength, Louis felt a mad grin split his face. Then he took three running steps and hurled himself off the rooftop.

"Holy shit!" he hollered as he swung through the open air in a graceful arc. He was airborne, he was flying, he was fucking invinci—

He crashed face first into the other building, with an audible thump that knocked the breath from his lungs. "Splat," he groaned, clinging to the concrete. He saw the word over his head, boldface print, inside a jagged red callout. He was never telling Zayn this part of the story. 

The web rope had dissipated as soon as Louis let it go. He crawled the rest of the way up the building, confidence restored by the time he hopped up onto the roof. Yes, that was much better.

Now he could see the neighbourhood properly, as well as some of the city beyond. The modest downtown skyline beckoned, the spire of the cathedral practically begging him to come take a swing. But Zayn might actually murder him in his sleep if he did that without him, so Louis drew his gaze back closer to home.

Across the street, a line of converted warehouses spanned several blocks. As Louis surveyed them, his pulse jumped. Impulse warred with dignity, though anyone who had known Louis for longer than a day could have called that outcome. 

He waited until the handful of pedestrians below cleared the block. Then he shot a line of webbing over to the rooftop across from him and used it to anchor his wild swing across the street. He went splat again, but recovered faster this time. 

After a few more attempts, he had it under control and swung gleefully from building to building, fighting the urge to whoop and draw attention to himself. He leapt between rooftops, sprung from wall to wall, crawled up and down every building in the neighbourhood. Occasionally, he crept upside down to an open window and peeked inside at people going about their work days, bored at their desks or angry on the phone.

Reluctantly, he directed his leaps back towards the shop. A few buildings down, he paused to catch his breath next to a high window on an old converted warehouse. He was about to leap back across the street when he heard a blast of guitars from inside the building.

The music faded as quickly as it had started up, but Louis' pulse picked up at the thought of music, bands—Harry. He had to look.

Inside, a mad hustle and bustle carried on far below the window. He spotted Louise on the far side of the open space, looking at pages of notes with another woman. On the other end, a couple of musicians were tuning their instruments. In between, a small horde of people darted to and fro carrying notebooks, equipment, and armfuls of clothing with no discernible order. The chaos appealed to Louis' soul on a primal level.

But then there was Harry. Once Louis found him, he could not look away. 

Harry was stood in a corner by himself, looking stressed and lonely as he watched all the activity that was for him, yet seemed not to touch him at all. He was chewing on a drink straw; when Louis managed to drop his gaze from Harry's face, he realized the cup Harry held was the coffee Louis had made him this morning. A frizzle of warmth blossomed in his chest. If he was drinking Louis' coffee, it had to mean he did not hate Louis all that much. It had to.

An older man approached Harry in his corner—no, he _cornered_ Harry. If people had hackles, then Louis' instantly raised at the man's presence. From the way he puffed his chest out and clapped Harry on the shoulder like they were best friends, Louis knew he was an ass.

Harry smiled and nodded at whatever the man was telling him, but Louis had seen Harry's real smiles, and they looked nothing like that. Louis' fist clenched on the window sill. He could fit through this window. He could swing right down there and sweep Harry from whatever bullshit that old dude was trying to inflict on him. 

The old dude clapped Harry’s shoulder again, hard enough to make even Harry's sturdy frame rock. Prickles of rage ran through Louis' skin from head to toe, and every muscle tensed to leap. But then the dude walked away, leaving Harry staring down at his coffee cup and Louis shaking with useless adrenaline.

He wished he could offer Harry something other than an almost-empty coffee cup. If he were a real hero, he could do something.

But all Louis Tomlinson could do was crawl away and head back to his menial retail job. Deflated, he slid down the side of the building and trudged back to the shop on foot. 

***  
In the days that followed, Louis' passion for both Harry and the life of a crime-fighting vigilante only grew until they eclipsed the rest of his life. He still went to classes (sometimes) but spent most of them in the back of the lecture hall shooting webs to snatch people’s hats, pens, and a copy of Q magazine he had been meaning to flip through at the newsstand. 

At night he had rehearsals for his play—or at least, the rehearsals took place. They happened mostly without Louis. It was not his fault. He had walls to climb and buildings to swing around, a flatmate to exhilarate with wild airborne antics. 

Plus, Zayn had started making sketches for a new book. Obviously, it featured various versions of Louis swooping through the air to surprise bad guys doing unspecified bad things. 

"You know what you should draw," Louis said one night after they had returned from a late-night romp through downtown Manchester. His chin rested on Zayn's shoulder as he watched a weird-ass costume taking form under Zayn's pencil. "You should draw me playing for the United."

Zayn's pencil hovered over the paper mid-stroke. He twisted his head around to squint at Louis, nose squishing against his cheek. "Draw you playing footie? What for?"

Louis shrugged one shoulder. "I could be using my powers and shit. You can still draw me in a stupid costume if your heart's set on it."

"What powers are you going to use to play football?" Zayn demanded. "I don't think anyone's ever made the highlight reel for sticking to the ball."

He drew back with a noise of protest in his throat. "I'm not just sticky! I have enhanced speed and agility, too, thank you very much."

"I can't draw agility." Zayn turned back to his sketch pad with finality. 

Louis sighed and slumped harder against his back. He thought the small pencil-drawn Louis looked quite fast and agile, but his mind wandered away from footie soon enough.

"Do you think I'd really need a costume?" he asked. "If... I tried to do any of that? For real?"

Zayn froze under him. "Do you want to do any of this for real?"

"Dunno," Louis hedged, torn between excitement and embarrassment. "I should, though, right? Don't you think I should? If I can?"

He felt Zayn's shoulders rise and fall with a deep breath. Then he had to sit back as Zayn shifted around in his chair to face him head on. 

"Yeah," Zayn said. "I think maybe you should. People need help, and it's not like the police are any good to most of us."

Louis nodded slowly. In his mind, Harry's green eyes shone in his memory, filled with admiration over nothing more than Louis mouthing off to some git. Soon enough, all of Manny could be looking at him that way—though among the faceless throng in his imagination, he still saw only Harry.

Zayn's mouth quirked up as he watched Louis' face. "Might not hurt your chances with a glamourous pop star, either, yeah?"

His cheeks burned at being caught out in his fantasy. "Maybe. That's not why, though."

"I know." Zayn drew another breath, but stopped before saying anything else.

Louis kicked his angle. "But? I feel a but in there."

"Don’t feel my butt," Zayn returned on autopilot and kicked him back. "Just promise me you'll be careful if you go out there."

"Kind of defeats the purpose." Louis started to laugh, but stopped when Zayn narrowed his eyes at him.

"I'm serious, Louis. I've been doing a lot of reading, and the police don't really love it when someone gets powered up and goes vigilante on their turf." Zayn chewed on his bottom lip for a moment. "And I don't want to see you in the Cowell labs as their latest experiment, either."

A surge of cold swept through Louis' chest; he had not even thought of that before, but Zayn was right. The radioactive spider or whatever had changed him must have happened during their visit to Cowell BioIndustries. Louis was probably their trademarked property now or summat. 

He kicked Zayn's ankle again, this time more of a gentle nudge. "Guess I'm the freaky shit now, yeah?"

Zayn grinned and brandished his pencil. "Stick with me," he said as he turned back to his sketch pad. "I'll make you hot shit. And yes, obviously you're going to need a mask, you idiot."

Louis grinned and settled his chin back on Zayn's shoulder to watch as Zayn scratched out what he had been working on. In its place, a pretty sick-looking mask started to take shape, and Louis never noticed the hours of the night slipping by outside his daydreams.

No matter how exhausted he was, no matter how many classes and rehearsals he missed, Louis dragged himself into work every morning without fail. Any day could be the day Harry came back. 

Harry had yet to show up, but Louise came every day for two drinks and a chat (usually about Harry). His heart rose and fell every time he saw her. He hung on every word, every story she had about Harry. He fell in love a little more every day, and every day he sent her off with increasingly elaborate concoctions in the hope that Harry would do the same.

On the day Louis finally snapped, she came straight to the pick-up counter to lounge and watch him work. "So what are you going to woo H with today?" she asked with a sly grin. 

He was already blending with the concentration of an Iron Chef, but he spared her one hard look. "Today is the day, Louise. I'm going for broke. This is the best, most delicious drink I know how to make."

It was the drink he had tried to make for Harry on the day everything had gone terribly wrong. This time he moved with precision and confidence. Every ingredient, every flavour balanced together for an exquisite taste experience. He was a goddamn artist. 

When it was done, whipped cream flawlessly fluffy under a perfect drizzle of mocha syrup, he placed the cup in front of Louise with monk-like reverence. "Here it is. Go, quickly. It must reach his hands before it starts sweating."

She raised her eyebrows in amusement. "Right. And what about my coffee?"

"Go!" He shooed her away with vigorous flaps of his hands. They were friends enough that she knew he would make it up to her. "Quickly!"

This time she rolled her eyes, but she picked up the drink and started for the door without further argument. His gaze stayed glued to the cup in her hand. "Wait!" he called suddenly, motioning her back to the counter.

"I thought I was on a mission," she complained as she returned.

He ignored the complaint, reaching to take the cup back. With his other hand, hidden by the coffee machines, he shot a web along the counter to nick the spare Sharpie from next to the till. 

With greater care than he had ever written anything else, he wrote along the curve of the cup. _I'm sorry. :(_

He bit his lip and shoved it back at her. "All right. Go!"

She snapped him a jaunty salute and hurried out. Louis tried to take a deep breath, but his lungs had tightened up as the door thumped shut behind her. He tried to calculate how long it would take her to get over to their building, how long it would take Harry to see the note and to drink enough to understand the message.

He tried not to watch the door. Every minute lumbered by like an elephant trudging over his heart. Zayn was not even been there to play exasperated audience to his sense of melodrama.

***

Harry did not come.

***


	3. Swings

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No, this is not an April Fool's joke! I really am updating this fic! 
> 
> So I guess I need to start off by saying I am very, very, very, very sorry for letting so much time pass between updates. I had every intention of updating every couple weeks, but then my life went to crazy town and I realized I needed to add some squishy character stuff that wasn't in my outline and BOOM! writer's block. Really, really bad writer's block. Like, completely pathetic. OMG I'm disgusting myself.
> 
> Anyway. Enough about my problems! I'm feeling much better now. So if you haven't completely forgotten about this story (I'm hoping for at least two of you?), I hope you enjoy this chapter and I promise that the next one will come much, much faster. Much.

Harry stared down at his dried-out coffee cup. He had nursed the drink the entire day before, and even at the end of the day, he had not been able to bring himself to throw it in the bin. For the first time in his adult life, he defied his mother's training and left it for the cleaning people to throw away.

Only they hadn't thrown it away, either. The cup greeted him this morning from an amp case, the frowny face next to Louis' apology holding even more accusation in its flat little eyes.

Accusation—but also invitation, one that Louis had been extending for days and had been building under Harry's skin just as long. He had recognized the message at the first sip, and he wanted to accept it.

That would mean admitting, to himself and Louis, that maybe he had been a bit silly about the whole thing. Harry was no stranger to oversensitivity, and a sulk only felt good for so long. If Louis really meant him ill, meant to reject him, surely he would not go to so much trouble to win Harry's forgiveness?

Maybe Louis was just the type of guy who had massively bad days.

Above him, Lou cleared her throat. When Harry looked up, her frown matched the little face on the cup. She dropped her gaze to it and shook her head. Then she handed him a fresh, full cup and walked away without a word, her thoughts wafting behind her like a cloud of personal disappointment.

The cup was a venti, as usual. Automatically he turned it around to examine the marks on the side. He had made an unconscious game of it all week, trying to guess what he would taste before he took his first sip.

This time the little boxes stood empty. Only the usual "H" had been added—and a tiny hand-drawn heart beside it. Harry's own heart clenched a little. He closed his eyes and raised the cup to his lips.

His eyes flew open in surprise. It was coffee. Just coffee, strong and sweet, but without any of the elaborate additions Harry had got used to. 

It was delicious. It tasted like simplicity and affection. It tasted like giving up. 

Harry got to his feet and made it halfway to the door before any conscious purpose surfaced in his mind. "Harry?" Niall said as he stormed past. "All right, mate?"

"Something wrong with your coffee?" Lou called from behind him.

"Yes," he snapped, and Paul just managed to sidestep him before he plunged out the door and into the street. 

He strode the short blocks between the studio and the coffee shop, fueled by excitement and nerves. When he pushed open the door, the scent and warmth washed over him with relief and comfort, like he had been homesick for a place he had only visited twice.

His gaze immediately zoomed in on Louis, pouring something behind the bar. His friend was handling the till where a handful of people stood queued. Harry girded himself, cast aside his ingrained aversion to poor manners, and charged past the queue directly up to the bar.

"Excuse me," he said. "I need to make a complaint."

Louis' head snapped up. His eyes widened, and his mouth dropped open just enough to make him look stunned, but still sexy.

"I believe I was promised a girly drink. This drink—" Harry held the offending cup high in the air. "—is entirely inadequate in that regard. I insist you remake it properly."

Louis kept gaping at him until his grinning friend took the half-finished drink from his hand and pushed Louis over to the stacks of cups. Harry gave an awkward wave to the horrified customers in the queue, suddenly aware that his hair was loose around his shoulders and his t-shirt left his distinctive tattoos on full display.

But he forgot everyone else in the shop when Louis finally stirred into action. Louis said nothing, but his face set in determination as he pulled a cup and began assembling Harry's drink. As he worked, his gaze kept flicking back to Harry's. Every time their eyes met, Harry's heart jumped.

Finally, Louis snapped the lid onto the drink and (carefully) slid it over the counter to Harry. He plunked a straw down next to it, and then took a step back. And waited.

It took Harry three embarrassing tries to get the wrapper off the straw—but when he took his first sip, heaven exploded in his mouth. Impossibly, it far surpassed even yesterday's attempt. It embodied the perfection of sweet and bitter, coffee and fruity chocolate, and possibly Harry was once again overreacting to a coffee drink, but he could not repress the blissed out smile that pulled at his mouth. "Holy—that's the best thing I've ever put in my mouth."

As soon as the words came out, he winced and waited to see if Louis would jump on the innuendo. Would it be better if he did or if he didn't? 

But Louis only looked at him, sober and a tiny bit shy. "Before. I was having... a really bad day. I wasn't making fun of you. I wouldn't do that."

Harry nodded slowly. Louis' soft gaze struck him hard. "I know you wouldn't. I'm sorry I was such a diva."

"I'm sorry you've ever had anyone treat you that way," Louis said.

They looked at each other until they both started to smile. "See you?" Harry offered.

Louis' smile widened until it crinkled his eyes. "See you."

Harry lifted his cup in a salute and ducked out of the shop, heart thrumming a joyful beat. He skipped a few steps down the pavement—and then stopped in the middle of the street when a scribble of black ink caught his eye. 

When he lifted the cup again, the glee burst out of him in a rush of laughter. He hopped twice and spun around, and then flailed his arms out to keep from toppling over. He had more phone numbers thrown at him in a day than most boys got in a year—but this was the first one he meant to keep.

***

"How do I even woo a pop star?" Louis flung the question at the front door before Zayn had even fully opened it.

The door paused in mid-swing; Zayn's head poked cautiously around it. He found Louis on the sofa, where he had built himself a little den of textbooks and anxiety, and raised his eyebrows. 

Louis hung his head in quasi-sincere apology. "Soz, mate. That came out wrong. I meant, did your DJ gig go all right?"

Zayn came the rest of the way into their flat and shrugged as he closed the door behind him. "Yeah, it was all right. Not a bad crowd for a Tuesday."

"He texted me a prawn." Louis held up his phone, though the screen was too dim for Zayn to see. His battery was down to three percent; he had been staring at the prawn the whole damn night, unwilling to let go of his phone long enough to put it on the charger in the kitchen. "What does a prawn mean?"

Zayn came over and took the phone. He squinted down at the prawn as though analyzing it for secret meaning. That was exactly what Louis had been doing for hours, but Zayn usually did better at this kind of thing. 

Finally, Zayn hummed and handed the phone back. "Dunno, man. It's a fucking prawn."

"Well, exactly." Louis looked down at the screen just in time to see the Samsung logo swirl up as the phone shut down. "It's too odd not to mean something."

"I think it just means your boyfriend is a weirdo." Zayn swung his backpack off his shoulder and started shoving Louis' stuff off the couch so he could sit down. The shine of Harry's fame had worn off for Zayn somewhere around the fourth frappuccino of overcompensation.

Louis' tummy, on the other hand, fizzed with the same giddy joy that had kept him flying high all day. He might actually have a real chance with Harry. Beautiful, sweet, funny, completely out of his league Harry. "He's not my boyfriend. Yet. That's my problem." 

"Ah. Yeah, I can see how that would bother you." Zayn unzipped his backpack and then paused with his hand at the opening. His eyes sparkled even in the muddy light from their struggling rubbish bin lamp. "And it's not that I don't care about your plucky love interest, but we have bigger things to worry about."

Louis waited as Zayn looked at him expectantly, clearly waiting for him to cotton on to whatever could be more important than Harry. "I got nothing," he said at last with an impatient twitch of his shoulder.

Zayn rolled his eyes, his entire head casting upward in a silent but pointed plea to Allah for patience. "Mate. Super powers? Forget something?"

Louis winced. Not forgot, exactly; it was just that Harry had this way of pushing the rest of his priorities far to the back. "Right. I've been working on that."

"I know. I'm proud of you." Zayn's expression softened, and Louis warmed from it. He was not used to hearing that from anyone outside his mum. "You still want to make a go of it?"

Another thrill went through Louis' body, darker than the sweet zing Harry inspired. "Yeah. Think I'm gonna try."

"All right." Zayn grinned and gripped his bag tighter. "But there's one more thing we got to figure out before you do: what are you going to wear?"

"Uh—" Louis looked down at himself. "Dunno. Just me joggers or—"

"No." Zayn started shaking his head almost before Louis had started speaking. "No. You can't look shabby next to the Americans. I won't let you have those regrets."

"So you're going to style me?" He would not mind that. Zayn always looked hot. In fact, he should have Zayn style him for work every morning, just in case Harry came in again.

"I've been working on a few designs," Zayn admitted and pushed his hand into the backpack. 

Louis watched, eager to see new sketches. Zayn had not shown him anything in a few days.

But instead of the sketchbook Louis expected, Zayn pulled out a handful of shiny fabric. Louis' breath caught as Zayn shook it out and held it up with a hopeful grin. "Do you like it?"

It was black and red and gorgeous. Louis started to reach out for it, then clenched his fist when he realized his hand was trembling. "I didn't know you could sew."

"Nah, had me mum make it, innit." Zayn shook the suit at him until Louis finally took it. "Told her it was for your play."

The material felt like magic under his fingers. Once he had it, he could not put it down, even when he started stripping off right there in the living room. "Zayn, this is incredible."

"It's only spandex for now." Zayn leaned forward to examine his (and his mum's) work as Louis pulled the suit up and shrugged his arms into the long sleeves. "But I'm working on something tougher."

"No, it's perfect." Louis looked down at his arms, which looked more muscular than usual. Black lines criss-crossed over the deep red, encasing him in his own personal web. "How's the arse look?"

Zayn grinned and made a show of checking him out. "Spectacular," he judged and dug into his bag again. "Here, gloves. Don't worry, they won't restrict your web shooting, I cut a little hole. And a mask, to keep your lovely face off the Beeb."

When he was fully equipped, Zayn steered him in front of the full-length mirror on Zayn's closet. It took Louis a moment to focus his eyesight through the fine mesh over his eyes. Then he inhaled sharply. "Shit. I look sick. Zayn, I can't even believe you did this."

Zayn squeezed his shoulders and bounced up and down behind him. "Just tell me I get exclusive creative rights to all your adventures and we'll be even."

"Duh. Obviously." Louis tipped his head back onto Zayn's shoulder with a grin. "Who else would I trust to chronicle my legend?"

"Ugh. You're creepy up close," Zayn complained. He shoved Louis off his shoulder and left Louis to continue admiring himself in the mirror. 

When Zayn was out of sight, Louis pulled the mask up and looked himself in the eyes, biting his lip. Before this moment, deep down under all his bravado, Louis had not been convinced he would ever do something meaningful with his powers. He was no hero, just a cheeky lad from Donny with more bravery than sense.

But even if he was no hero yet, at least now he looked like one. He pulled the mask back down. And maybe he felt like one as well, just a little bit.

A moment later, Zayn reappeared with Louis' dead phone in his hand. "About Harry," he said as he shoved the phone into Louis' hand. "Charge your phone. Then text him back."

Louis fumbled to get a grip on the phone. He pulled off the mask again, ignoring the way it made his hair stick up. "Text him back? That's it?"

"That's it." Zayn shrugged, then shook his head as he wandered off. "A prawn, fuck. Never meet your idols."

After a moment, Louis followed, diverting to the kitchen where the phone charger occupied the last working outlet in the flat. He plugged in and then stared at the blinking LED, waiting for it to get enough of a charge to turn on.

Text Harry back. It was so simple, it might just work.

***

Harry managed to only twitch a little bit when his phone chirped next to him. He thought he had managed to keep it subtle, even if all the people hanging out in his hotel suite did stop their conversations to turn and look at him.

"Well?" Niall demanded from where he sat sandwiched between Josh and Sandy. "That the boy?"

He knew even before Niall's derisive snort that his casual shrug fooled nobody. "Dunno. Haven't looked yet, have I?"

"Yeah, but it's killing you not to," Sandy said. "And since you're currently our main source of income, do us a favour?" 

Harry laughed along with everyone else, long practiced at self-deprecation, but he was already scooping up the phone. When the message alert lit up on the screen, Harry's face also lit up and broadcast the answer to the rest of the room. Amid the cheers from his friends, he abandoned any illusion of coolness and eagerly tapped to open Louis' text.

When he saw what Louis had sent, a bark of laughter erupted half from his throat and half from his nose. He clapped his hand over the lower half of his face, hunching over the phone.

"Oh, this has got to be good." Niall was already getting up off the couch and making a beeline for Harry. "Come on, let's have it. Is it a dick pic? I bet it's a dick pic."

"No," Harry protested, both to Niall's question and his grabby hands. But Niall had always been quicker, and knew Harry's passcode.

"A poop emoji? Seriously?" Niall stared down at the phone, face crinkling in confusion. "Well, that's... romantic."

Harry beamed up at him, stomach still fluttering with the giggles that wanted to escape. "Yes!" he said. "It's perfect. He's perfect."

Niall shook his head before dropping the phone into Harry's lap and patting his head. "Perfect for you, anyway."

***

"I'll get you whatever you want," Harry tried again, as Niall's hand landed on the door that was the only thing separating them from Harry's inevitable mortification. "Delivered right to you."

"You're going to get me whatever I want anyway," Niall countered, though he paused with his hand still on the door to look back over his shoulder. "And if you're that worried I might embarrass you, that means it's high time I met this lad, don't you think?"

"I'm always worried you'll embarrass me," Harry shot back, though he was also a little excited to show Louis off to his best friend. Beautiful people clamoured to be on Harry's arm (if it was not rude of him to say so), but he had not been excited about any of them in a long time.

In any case, it was too late. Niall was through the door, pausing inside to survey the shop.

"Which one is he?" he stage-whispered to Harry. "Oh, is it him? Good choice, nicely done."

"I know, right?" Harry started to say, heart swelling with fond pride, until he followed Niall's gaze to the man behind the till. "Oh, no, that's his mate. I...don't see Louis."

His heart deflated as he scanned the entire shop and found only Louis' mate and one other bloke working behind the bar. Somehow he had assumed Louis was always here, like one of the fixtures. Of course Louis had a whole life outside this shop, and Harry knew nothing about it.

He wanted to turn and leave, but Niall had already side-stepped into the queue. Harry sighed and joined him. They needed caffeine, after all. 

Niall was not looking at him, eyes focused on nothing in particular, though they seemed to stray over to the front of the queue more often than not. Still, he nudged Harry in the ribs and bent his head closer to say, "Maybe your boy took a sickie today. Did he text you anything else?"

"Maybe. And no, nothing else." And that was the crux of it, wasn't it? They had met three times—not even over coffee, over coffee transactions—and exchanged two texts. And that was being rather generous in counting an emoji apiece as texts. Louis was not Harry's boy. Harry's cheeks burned; he had ended up embarrassing himself with his excitement over something that existed only in his imagination.

The queue inched forward. This non-Louis barista seemed much less efficient at his baristing. Harry narrowed his eyes at him, already planning his complaint should his drink prove substandard. 

When they stepped up to the counter at last, Louis' friend looked up from the till and grinned at them. Zayn, his nametag said, and there was one more thing Harry had not known. 

"Well, hello, H," Zayn greeted, his grin broadening. "Back for another whipped cream masterpiece?" 

"Ay, he's definitely here for the cream, all right." Niall chortled. He extended his fist towards Zayn, who bumped it with a delighted crow of laughter. Apparently they were already best friends, which was good, because Harry would shortly be auditioning for a new one. 

Zayn turned back towards Harry and cleared his throat when he saw Harry's dark look. "Right, so what can I get you lads?"

Harry hesitated. He had not had to choose his own drink in over a week. And what he wanted did not even have a name, at least not one Zayn would recognise. 

"Pumpkin Spice Latte," Niall answered promptly.

"Solid choice. What size?"

"What's the big-ass one?" Niall jerked his thumb towards Harry. "Obviously he's paying."

"Obviously," Zayn agreed as he reached for a venti cup. "But can I get your name?"

Harry glanced around the shop one more time as Niall exchanged names, and possibly numbers and bodily fluids with Zayn for all Harry noticed. Was Louis really not here? 

When he turned back to the counter, Zayn was watching him with raised eyebrows and a slight twitch to his lips. Harry opened his mouth to say something, but found himself hanging as his eyes scanned the overhead menu with an almost childish reluctance to actually pick something.

Zayn snorted a bit, covered his mouth for a second, then gave Harry a pitying look. "It's all right, mate. Louis' here, he's just in the back unwrapping pastries."

"Oh." He shrugged around the relief fizzling in his chest. "That's cool."

"It's funny, because he's always hated getting up early," Zayn went on. "But now he's suddenly bullied everyone into switching their shifts around so he can be here every morning."

Niall gave an exaggerated gasp as Harry ducked his head to hide the pleased smile welling up from the sudden glow in his tummy. "Wow. That's just bizarre."

"Ain't it just?" Zayn agreed, then raised his voice. "Oi, Louis! Your curly boy is here!"

Something crashed in the back of the shop. Louis' shaggy head popped out into the doorway behind Zayn, eyes scanning the shop. As soon as he found Harry, his face lit up with a smile so happy that Harry's last insecurities stopped niggling and slunk away back into his dark subconscious. 

"Hello," Louis said, coming up next to Zayn and gently elbowing him out of the way. "Fancy seeing you here."

Harry nodded. "People might talk. Oh, this is Niall," he added at the subtle cough in his ear.

Niall reached across the counter to grab Louis' hand. "Niall Horan, lead guitarist, best mate, and guy who'll beat the shit out of you if you try anything shady."

"Niall," Harry hissed, closing his eyes and clapping his palm over them. "What did we just talk about?"

"I made no promises," Niall reminded him. "But seriously, mate, I had to meet the man who could make H laugh like a lunatic with a single emoji."

"Is that so?" Louis said, and when Harry peeked through his fingers, he was watching Harry with a sly smile that sent sparks up Harry's spine. 

"Seriously, I thought he was going to do a live reenactment of that emoji in his pants. I mean, not my kink, but whatever makes you two turtledoves happy."

Harry dropped his hand from his face to give Niall a full-on glare, but Louis was snorfling with laughter in sweet, tiny huffs. It was beyond Harry's capabilities to remain murderous.

"You know," Zayn said. "I'm pretty sure it's Louis' break time. Isn't it, Louis?"

The other guy behind the bar stopped in the middle of making Niall's latte with an indignant look that indicated it was definitely not Louis' break time. And in truth, Harry and Niall were already on the clock as well, but for once, Harry did not care. He had so few rock star diva moments; he was going to fucking take this one.

Louis was already shedding his apron and coming out from behind the bar. His hand sparked a flare of heat when he touched Harry's arm to guide him towards an empty table in the corner. 

When they settled, they looked at each other without speaking for a long moment. Though Louis already felt like an old friend, he was not. They had no ongoing conversation to continue. But Harry felt no awkwardness in the silence--only a tingle of anticipation, here on the threshold of something new.

"I'm glad I made you laugh," Louis said after a while. "I put a lot of thought into that emoji, as I'm sure you could tell."

"It was perfect," Harry assured him. "Ignore Niall. He's not on our level."

Louis laughed and ducked his head, looking up through his eyelashes. "To be honest, I wasn't sure how I was supposed to respond to a prawn from a rock star, but Zayn made me get over myself."

"I'm glad he did." Harry tried not to cringe visibly. Louis had already been exposed to enough of Harry's weirdness, considering they had not even been on a date yet. He'd like to keep some modicum of sex appeal in hopes of actually getting Louis into bed. "This is definitely not going to work if you think of me as a rock star." 

"True." Louis nodded thoughtfully. "I mean, you're alternative pop at the outside."

Instantly, the faint pressure in the back of his mind eased. Harry felt comfortable, and even obliged, to kick Louis under the table, jolting a giggle out of him. "So Zayn's your mate?"

"Yeah. Guess he's probably my Niall." Before Harry could pull his foot back to his side of the table, Louis caught it between both of his. "Been friends since before uni, flatmates ever since. We put up with each other."

Harry nodded, resting his booted toes against Louis' calf. The easy intimacy sent anticipatory warmth spiraling up from his ankle. "I'm sure it's hard to find people who will put up with the likes of you."

"It's a big ask," Louis agreed. "I know you have the same problem. Speaking of—where's my little raincloud today? Your friend Louise?"

"She took the day off." Harry frowned, remembering the curt text he had received from her last night. "Personal reasons, but she didn't say why. Which was odd. Usually she overshares, if anything."

"Really?" Louis sat back, both feet tapping over Harry's ankle almost idly. "I had rather the opposite impression. Until you came into the picture, all she did was complain about her orders. But I felt like she just wanted to talk to someone."

Harry listened as Louis explained Louise's odd pattern of complaints with a new sense of relief—finally, someone else had noticed something was not right. "That's not like her at all."

"I didn't think so." Louis shrugged. "I mean, I don't know her, not really. But she wasn't like this over the summer, not before a few weeks ago."

"No, you're right. I've felt something off, too. She's been quieter than normal, at least until she started giving me a hard time about you." Harry crossed his arms and leaned forward over the table. "She never brings Lux—that's her daughter?—to the studio like she used to. But she's always on the phone, calling to check on her."

Louis nodded slowly. "Well, we can't make her talk until she's ready. But if I keep an eye on her here and you keep an eye on her there, we'll make sure she's okay."

Harry knew his answering smile was well more besotted than it should be, given the topic. He had meant this conversation to go in a sexier direction, but in a way, this felt more intimate. They were already a team. At least for a moment, Harry did not feel so alone anymore.

The shop had quieted down, enough that Harry could hear Niall when he cleared his throat from across the room. Louis gave him a rueful look, knowing as well as Harry did what was coming, even before Harry looked over to see Niall tapping his watch. They had gone past indulgent lateness into irresponsibility, and Harry felt the familiar tug of guilt.

"I think I have to go," he said. "Or they will literally send armed guards after me."

Louis raised his eyebrows, but seemed unfazed. "I wouldn't be fussed. Pretty sure I could take them."

"I bet you could." Harry hooked his other foot around Louis' ankle and dragged Louis' feet over to his side of the table. "I really do have to go."

"Wanna do something tonight?" Louis kept his feet clamped around Harry's, his calves sliding against Harry's through the layers of denim.

He really, really did, but Harry had to bite his lip and shake his head. "We're way behind on recording already, so I promised I'd stay for a night session. But soon, yeah?"

Louis held up his phone and waggled it. "I've got your number now."

"Use it as much as you want. Use it a lot." Harry gave Louis' feet a last press before pulling away and pushing his chair back. He hesitated halfway out of it. "And thank you."

Louis tilted his head up to look at him. "For what?"

For someone in Harry's position, it was a stupid amount of vulnerability to offer someone he barely knew. But Louis had just shown such empathy for someone else he barely knew. Harry could not suppress his admiration or stop it from morphing into a peculiar trust.

"No one's asked me out on a proper date since I was in school." His mouth quirked in habitual self-deprecation. "If it's through my manager, it doesn't count."

Louis just leaned back in his seat and nodded. Harry smiled, and he felt the burn of Louis' gaze all the way to the door.

He and Niall hustled down the street. Niall was just rapping on the studio door for admission when Harry's phone buzzed. Louis had sent him a picture. 

Niall craned his neck to look. "Dick pic," he chanted, "Come on, dick pic."

"You're making me uncomfortable," Harry informed him with a feigned frown. Then he opened the picture and burst out laughing.

Niall cocked his head, and then shook it as the studio door opened. "The two of you were made for each other. Weirdos," he said fondly as he trudged inside.

Harry took another moment to grin down at his phone. Louis had sent a picture of an empty cup with an "H" and an unhappy face in Louis' familiar scrawl. Harry had completely forgotten to even get a coffee.

***

"No rehearsal tonight?" Zayn called from the lounge as Louis zipped past him and into his bedroom.

"I got a bigger role," Louis called back. "And tonight is dress rehearsals."

Zayn was already grinning when he stuck his head in the door to watch Louis scrambling into his suit. "Now that's what I'm talking about. Sure you're ready?"

"I've got superpowers and a sick costume. What else could I need?" Louis did spare a longing glance down at his phone, which lay atop his crumpled jeans next to his feet. He could check one more time. If Harry texted, he would hate to make him wait hours for a response....

Resolutely, he pulled the gloves on and reached for his mask. "Besides, Harry's busy at work tonight. I don't want to plan this for a night when he might be free."

He pulled the mask over his head just as Zayn's eyes started to roll. When he focused through the eyepieces, Zayn was shaking his head and reaching out to brush imaginary wrinkles from Louis' shoulders. "Seriously, mate. Be safe out there."

Louis batted him away and headed for the window (no superhero ever left through the front door). "Safety is for losers, Zayn."

"You can't date Harry if you're dead!" Zayn shouted after him as he shot a web across the alley and swung off as dramatically as possible into the darkness.

"Thanks, Mum," Louis muttered. His voice sounded strange inside the mask, but he rather liked the voiceover quality of it. He somersaulted up onto the roof and stood with his hands on his hips, looking out into the night. Now he, too, was a creature of it, ready to take his rightful place. Which hopefully was at the top of the food chain.

He ran across the roof and flung himself off the other side, whooping as he plummeted before shooting a web to catch himself. Nothing could match this exhilaration—except maybe Harry's smile. Louis would have to test that thoroughly.

On any normal day, Louis could find trouble like no one else. But now, as he leapt and swung through the city, he had no idea where to start looking for it. The streets lay mostly empty below, quiet even for a Wednesday night. Only a few late commuters scurried along the pavement, or the odd group of pub goers, none of whom looked particularly endangered. 

An hour later, Louis dangled himself from an office building and sighed. Encounters with bad guys happened so organically in the movies. He had assumed an appropriate entry-level villain would present themselves without much effort on Louis' part. It wasn't possible that crime in Manny was going down, was it?

Crime fighting turned out to be rather boring without any crime. Louis did not tolerate boredom well. "Come on, you gotta do your part," he muttered to the faceless criminals of Manchester.

He could be back in his crappy but cosy flat, staring at his phone. Though he and Harry had both been kept busy with work all day, that had not stopped a steady flow of text messages between them. Once the cellular ice had broken, they had not shut up, even under the evil eyes of Louis' lecturer and Harry's manager, respectively. 

He could go hang from the window at Harry's studio and watch him record. Though that would be creepy—at least four steps above stalking someone via frappuccino. Also, there was the matter of his secret identity. He was not nearly cool enough yet for that to be attractive rather than freaky.

If he could find some innocent citizens to rescue from a wrongdoer or two, he would be much cooler.

From the top of an office building, the spire of the town hall shone invitingly in the distance. Louis shrugged to himself. "Might as well have a little fun. We'll call it training."

He shot, leapt, and swung. But as he cleared the corner around the next building, the back of his neck began to tingle. He smacked against a window as a full-blown shiver spread down his back and through his arms. 

Nerves still jangling, he clung to the window and waited. After a minute, he realised he was waiting for the sound of approaching sirens. That was when he had felt this sensation before. Somewhere nearby, someone was in trouble.

But no sirens approached, no matter how hard he strained his superhuman hearing. Slowly, it dawned on him: the cavalry were not coming. He was the cavalry.

Heart pounding, he leapt again. His instincts drove him forward, but he did not have to go far before his ears caught a muffled cry of fear. 

He changed direction in mid-air, landing on a wall and creeping around the corner into the shadowed alleyway. There they were, just below him. A woman—a girl, really, no older than Louis—had her back against the unforgiving brick, cowering away from the man gripping her arm. 

"Up to you, babycakes." The man smiled as his fingers tightened, voice oily with the sweetness of a predator confident that his prey would not fight back. "What's more important to you?"

The girl raised a shaking hand to her neck where a glint of diamond caught the light. Louis zoomed in on the setting: old-fashioned, but lovingly polished. A family heirloom that she was not going to lose to some scuzzy knob who fancied himself a shark.

Even sharks were afraid of spiders.

As a metaphor, he could admit it needed work. But the thought buoyed him as he dropped swift and silent until he hung upside down behind the man's head. "Sorry, mate, but I have to object," he said. "Babycakes is term of endearment passed down through at least four generations in my family, and I'd rather you didn't sully it."

The girl spotted him first and gasped. If anything, she looked even more terrified. The thug, when he turned his head, did not look particularly terrified at all. "What the fuck are you?"

Louis heaved a sigh. "Marketing is everything," he said. Then he flipped in mid-air and slammed his foot into the thug's face.

The guy let out a surprisingly high-pitched squeal as he stumbled backward, clutching his face. "The fuck! You fucking cunt, I'm going to end you."

"Sorry, what was that?" Louis dropped to the ground and cocked his head. "Couldn't hear you too well through all that blood leaking through your fingers."

The man lunged, missing Louis as he flipped backwards. On the second lunge, Louis merely stepped out of the way, his enhanced reflexes leaving his attacker stumbling into the empty space where Louis had been the moment before. 

He was going to have to go on the offensive again before long, but he would rather the girl was out of harm's way before that. Unfortunately, she was still standing there gaping at him. 

"Might want to get out of here, sweetheart," he called as he swung up against the wall to get some leverage for another kick. "God helps those who know when to run."

She ran. She also began to scream, which provided an effective, albeit hair-raising soundtrack to the ass-kicking Louis was delivering to his new friend. Louis had always been a scrapper, but words tended to do better for him than fists. Not anymore.

In fact, their little cat and mouse game of lunge, dodge, and kick was almost fun. All right, it was a lot of fun, at least until the mugger started actually crying with frustration.

"Aw, mate, now you're making me feel bad," Louis complained. "Well. Not as bad as you're about to feel."

Then he put the guy down, face first into the muck of the alley way. A quick burst of webbing around ankles and wrists and he had the man hogtied. 

Louis crouched down by the man's head and rested his chin on his fist. "Right. Now what to do with you?"

Another tingle ran down his spine right before his ears caught running footsteps coming towards them. He looked up just as a police constable skidded to a stop in the mouth of the alleyway.

The cop was young, head shorn beneath his hat, brown eyes wide with disbelief as he took in the scene in front of him. "What the—" he muttered before pulling himself together and shouting, "Police! Stay where you are and put your hands up."

Louis tilted his head down at the robber. "Well, staying where he is shouldn't be a problem, but I think hands up might be a bit much to ask of our friend here."

The constable pulled out his truncheon and brandished it, narrowing his eyes. "All right, smart arse, I don't know who you are. Actually, I don't even know what you are. But I'm bringing both of you in for questioning.

Hopping to his feet, Louis grinned before realizing the cop probably could not see it through the mask. "Cheers for the invite, Constable—" He zeroed in on the name stitched into the man's jacket "—Payne. But I think I'll decline this time." 

He leapt up onto the wall, but paused as an impulse hit him. Then a web shot out and snatched the cop's hat right off his head. 

Constable Payne yelped, clapping his hands to his head an instant too late. Louis set the cap on his own head and flicked it to a jaunty angle. "What do you think? Do I have a future in law enforcement?"

"Why you—" For the second time in ten minutes, Louis had a man lunging for him with fury in his eyes. 

He scooted a few more feet up the wall, just to be safe, before setting the hat free with a flick of his wrist. It sailed further into the darkness of the alley, landing with a soft, wet thump. 

"Oops," he said. "Think that was a rubbish bin. Sorry, mate. Cheers for the clean-up, though."

Giddy with adrenaline, Louis shot off into the night. He had fought crime—and kicked its arse. Joy propelled him in wild swings across the city until finally the town hall loomed in front of him, clock tower lit in blue floodlights. 

He swung around the spire, hollering with laughter and triumph. Right, maybe it was not exactly Big Ben. But every hero had to start somewhere.

***

"Slow down, slow down!" Zayn laughed, grabbing Louis' wrists to still his flailing. "Tell me again, come on."

Louis winced as Zayn's grip tightened with his enthusiasm. "Careful. I think I overdid it on the web shooting."

Zayn's thumbs soothed over the sore spots. "Sorry. Now tell me everything again. Don't forget anything."

Louis launched into the story he had already told three times. He suspected he would tell it at least three more before he managed to sleep. If he managed to sleep.

"Fuck," Zayn breathed with awe when Louis finished. "That's amazing. That's literally the most amazing thing I've ever heard in my life."

"I know, right?" Louis flung himself back onto his pillows, arms outspread. "You gotta draw me, Zayn. Then maybe it'll feel real."

"On it." Zayn shifted to sit cross-legged next to him, sketchpad balanced on his knee. 

As he got to work, drawing as if possessed, Louis reached for his phone. His thumb automatically opened his message thread with Harry, then hovered over the keyboard, words he could never type jumbling up in his head. He had done well to leave his phone behind; he was not sure he would have been able to resist telling Harry everything in the heat of the moment. 

He startled when the phone buzzed, a new message from Harry popping up as though Louis had summoned him. Finally in bed!

Yeah me too, he sent back. After a moment, he inserted a winky face emoji and sent that, too. 

Harry returned with a laughing face, a blushing face, and a kissy face all in a row. Hope you didn't have too much fun without me. 

Would've been more fun with you, Louis replied, honest if not completely forthcoming. 

He sent a string of x's before letting the phone fall to his side and closing his eyes. In less than a fortnight, his entire world had changed. He just hoped he could keep up with it.

***  
The world still felt just as surreal by the end of the week, as Louis ignored work in favour of sitting at their now-usual table under Harry's bright gaze, which pressed into him like a physical touch. He babbled happily under the warmth and weight of it. By the time he finished narrating the entire plot of their autumn drama production, he had almost forgotten his other extracurricular activities.

Until Harry leaned forward on his elbows and wrapped his fingers around Louis' wrists. He gave them an impulsive, affectionate squeeze—and a sharp pain made Louis flinch before he could stop himself. 

"Sorry!" Harry said, pulling his hands away like Louis had burned him. "Sorry, sorry."

"No, it's all good." Louis fumbled to catch Harry's fingers and draw them back towards him. "Just bruised meself carrying some boxes this morning. C'mere."

Harry frowned and stroked one thumb gently over Louis' sore wrist. The skin did not look bruised, but at least it also did not look like a web shooter that was sore from being overextended in an aerial jaunt across the city the last couple nights.

"Better?" Harry asks.

"No." Louis pressed his wrist into Harry's palm. "Definitely needs some more attention."

Harry laughed, rubbing the delicate skin. "You need a lot of attention, don't you? I can already tell."

Louis hummed a little and tilted his head. The warmth from Harry's hand curled up his arm and into his chest, dissipating into a shiver. "Just yours will do, I think."

A smile, slow like syrup, curved Harry's lips. His thumb rubbed a little harder into the softness of Louis' arm, and this time it was the best pain. "Well, you've got that."

"Any chance I could get some tonight?" Louis waited a beat before offering a toothy grin. "Of your attention, I mean."

Harry's smile stretched into a smirk, but then faded. He leaned back, leaving Louis' hands empty and cold. "If it were mine to give. I'm in London for the weekend, though, doing press."

"All weekend?" Louis blurted in dismay. "How do you even have that much press to do?"

"You'd be surprised." Harry shrugged with a grimace. "And now you see why I'm still single."

The furrow in Harry's brown, while adorable, could not be tolerated if Louis could help it. He nudged Harry's ankle under the table until Harry had to look up. "Well," Louis said. "I'd like to think that single isn't completely accurate anymore."

And the sparkle of Harry's answering smile proved that wooing a pop star worked about the same as anyone else. "Nope." Harry leaned back in his chair, resting one ankle on his knee, smirk restored. "Not accurate at all."

"Though I still don't know what you're going to talk about for an entire weekend," Louis went on. "It's not like you've actually done anything yet."

"Hey." Harry's offended squawk was as darling and satisfying as Louis had anticipated. "We have a little world tour coming up, you know."

"Sure, but no one's seen it yet, have they?" 

"Well, we'd rather like to sell the tickets, you know, before the show." Harry's eyes narrowed, gone squinty in a way that should not have been attractive on anyone, but made Louis want to stroke Harry's bare skin and then push him down into a bed.

He waved a hand and fluttered his fingers in the air. "Just smile and show them your arse. It sold me right off," he said, and instantly felt like a super star himself, Harry's howls of laughter better than an arena of applause.

***

"You can't go out now," Zayn shouted from the lounge. "Your boyfriend's about to be on telly."

Louis paused with his suit pulled up only over his hips. Somehow, when Harry said he was off to do press, Louis had not registered that meant that Harry would be on the actual television. 

Empty sleeves dangling around his waist, he wandered out just in time to see Harry's name flash across the screen. "Stop it, he's not my boyfriend," he muttered as he flopped down on the sofa. The reality of Harry's fame coalesced in stark white letters, shriveling the sweet confidence that had filled him this morning.

Zayn snorted. "Yeah, whatever, man. I have video of you playing footsie that says otherwise."

Louis almost asked to see it, but Jonathan Ross was saying Harry's name and then a wild clamour of applause scattered the rest of Louis' thoughts. Seeing Harry performing in YouTube clips had been one thing. Louis starred in plenty of YouTube clips himself. Seeing him on the television, where the famous people lived, was quite something else.

Gone was his soft, rumpled, hoodie-clad boy who clutched his coffee and flirted with Louis in the mornings. Someone had replaced him with a rock star in skin-tight black jeans and a loose shirt that probably could have paid Louis and Zayn's rent for a month or two. Instead of the sweet smile that made Louis' cheeks flush, he wore a cool, sardonic look that projected equal parts enjoyment and disdain for what he was doing.

And that caused a different kind of flush to spread through Louis' skin.

"So Harry," Wossy said as Harry settled on the couch. "Before the show, as I looked over this list of all the things I wanted to talk about with you, my first question became very clear. When do you sleep?"

The audience provided an obedient laugh, and Harry ducked his head with a self-deprecating smile. But Louis frowned, remembering the shadows under Harry's eyes this morning as they had compared their next week's schedules trying to find a free evening to have an actual date. They had failed.

"Do you sleep?" Wossy persisted, milking the laughter. "Because between the touring, the albums, and the long list of ladies who have been enjoying your company, I'm having trouble imagining it. I need to know your secret."

"My secret?" Harry leaned back and crossed his legs. "When would I even have time for secrets?"

Wossy laughed along with the audience, but then leaned forward over his desk, fixing a hawk-eyed gaze on Harry's face. "Well, let's clear up the obvious question so the ladies of the world can move on with their lives—I understand there is one particular, very special person who has been occupying your time of late."

Right before sitting his final English exam the year before, Louis had made himself drink a six-shot espresso. The adrenaline spike that followed on Harry's words made his heart race twice as fast.

"Oh? Is that what you understand?" Harry raised his eyebrows, but otherwise kept his face blanker than Louis had ever seen it. Louis could watch the animation of Harry's face for hours; seeing it stilled made him oddly queasy.

Ross nodded slowly and let the question hang in the expectant dead air. Harry sat unmoved until at last the other man laughed and leaned back in his chair, surrendering the field. "I had to try. Can't let the Sun get all the scoops."

Harry implied forgiveness in the tilt of his head. "Well, I like you a lot better than I like them, so that raises your odds."

"Ladies and gentlemen, proudest moment of my life to date, this moment right here. I'll take it."

Zayn let out a slow, whistling breath as he slumped back next to Louis. "Whew. For a second there, I thought you were going to have to change your name and go into hiding."

"At least I already have a mask." Louis kicked his feet up onto the coffee table, pulse still thumping in his neck. "But obviously he wouldn't mention me. We've barely been dating a week."

"Don't you have to actually go on a date before you can say that? Have you even seen the guy outside your work place?" Zayn held up a finger to stop Louis' interruption. "No, creeping on him when he's at the studio doesn't count. And don't even try to tell me that you haven't."

"Just the once," Louis muttered, crossing his arms over his bare chest. 

"So the UK tour is kicking off with six sold-out nights at the O2," Wossy was saying, and Louis' feet thumped back onto the floor as he sat up abruptly. 

Zayn's hand knocked against his arm. "Trouble tingle?"

"Yeah." Louis winced and clapped his hand to the back of his neck. "More like a jangle. Never felt it this strong before."

He stood up and pulled the suit the rest of the way on, while Zayn ran to fetch his mask. Louis took it and waited to feel the usual pull, urging him in the direction of whoever needed his help. 

The only pull he felt drew his eyes back to the telly. When the camera closed in on Harry's face, he shivered with the intensity of the alarm coursing through him. 

"Yeah, we kick off on the twenty-ninth," Harry said, and the tingles culminated in a violent shudder down Louis' spine before dissipating like they had never happened.

Louis swayed in their wake, drained and woozy. Zayn's hands closed over his shoulders, guiding him back to the sofa right before his legs went noodly under him.

"Mate." Zayn's face loomed in Louis' vision. He tried to pull one eyelid up to examine him before Louis swatted him away. "What the fuck was that?"

"I don't know." Louis rubbed his hands over his face and then looked up at the television. Harry had already gone, replaced by some B-list starlet who looked like Emma Stone but was not. "I think... maybe it had something to do with Harry."

"But he's in London. What could you even do if he were in trouble?"

Louis shrugged and tilted his head back against the couch. He closed his eyes. "I don't think I feel up to going out tonight," he said, voice small enough to embarrass him with anyone but Zayn. "That all right?"

"Of course it is." Zayn's warmth shifted away from him. When he returned, the cool plastic of Louis' mobile pressed into Louis' hand. "Call your boy. Then you can help me with these sketches."

Louis smiled without opening his eyes. A few moments later, Harry's voice was in his ear, and (though he would never admit it even to Zayn) everything felt right again.

***

By Sunday night, Louis' mood had restored itself. Harry was on his way back from London, and the stars overhead shared Louis' joy as he swung beneath the unusually clear sky.

He had already saved one oblivious homeowner from a break-in attempt. No other danger had tingled to his attention, but Louis did not mind. He had found his prey for the night.

Below, standing watch on the corner, stood Louis' favorite cop, the earnest Constable Payne. From Louis' angle, Payne was reduced to the circumference of his hat -- a flat circle too much like a frisbee for anyone of Louis' character to resist. 

No one noticed as Louis silently dropped, head-first, down the side of the building—except a small girl standing across the street, clinging to her mum's hand as they waited for the bus. She gaped at him as he hovered just over Payne's head. 

Louis waggled his fingers at her in greeting, and then raised one finger to his lips. She mimicked his gesture, but he could still hear her stifled giggles and the click of the beads in her braids as Louis snagged his prize. 

He was halfway back up the wall by the time Payne absently reached up to adjust his hat. Louis' peanut gallery burst into peals of laughter as Payne's hand slapped against his forehead. He brought the other hand up to grope at his close-cropped head, as if the first hand might have just missed the giant hat. 

Inspiration struck as Payne started looking around his feet for his lost hat. Louis stopped where he was. By the time Payne finally thought to look up, Louis was posed with the hat on his head, as casual as one could look while stuck to a wall with radioactive spider powers. 

"Oi!" Payne shouted, reaching up to grab at Louis, even though Louis' foot was at least three yards above his head. "You little shit. Give that back."

"Nope," Louis called back, adjusting the tilt with two fingers. "I like it. Gives me an air of authority, which let's be honest, the rest of this get-up is lacking. You know?"

"I'm going to get that hat off your head, and that damn mask with it." Payne glowered up at him, looking like a cross bulldog puppy from Louis' angle. "Then we'll see who's funny, yeah?"

"Your face is still going to be funnier than mine, mate." Louis took a casual leap to the building across the street and watched as Payne sprinted after him on foot. He slid down the wall until his feet dangled only a few meters over the pavement.

"Aha, got you!" Payne reached the building and took a giant leap.

So did Louis. Payne's howl of rage as he smacked face first into the wall was the best sound Louis had heard all day.

"Oops," he said and made sure Payne was watching before scooting around the corner. 

They traveled together block after block, Louis leaping and swinging just far enough for Payne to chase after them. Instinct, or force of habit, pulled Louis toward familiar stomping grounds, and soon he was perched on the narrow ledge over the door to his own shop. He peered down, chin on his hand, as Payne skidded to a stop beneath him.

"Get down here, you fucker!" To his credit, Payne did not bother trying to jump up and grab him this time. At least the man could learn. "I am going to squash you like a bug."

Though he clearly still had some learning to do. Louis heaved a sigh. "Spiders aren't bugs, mate. I mean, that's like basic spiderology."

"You'll still squash just fine," Payne snarled. He pulled his taser off his belt and looked up and down between Louis and the weapon. Louis was not sure how Payne intended to make that work, but he seemed determined. 

"Oi, what's going on here? Can we help you, Constable?"

Payne startled, attention pulled from Louis, taser falling to his side with an almost guilty air. "Oh, excuse me. I was just—"

"Yelling at the Starbucks sign? What, you work at some indie café on the side or summat?"

"No! No, I—"

Louis craned his neck until he spotted the familiar fluff of Zayn's head and smirked. Then he launched himself up and around the corner just as Payne pointed up to where Louis had been sat an instant ago.

"No, I was yelling at that—wait. Where'd he go?"

"Where did who go?" Zayn asked, tone sweetened with the perfect amount of dubious innocence. Louis chortled silently as Payne fumbled for an explanation that did not make him sound insane. 

Then a large black town car rolled by on the street, and Louis' ears caught the low rumble of his favorite voice inside it. "No, I understand," Harry was saying to someone. "It's all right, I'm not that tired. Could do with a spot of tea, though."

"We'll see what we can do," another male voice answered him. The voice was unfamiliar, but the pacifying tone set Louis' teeth on edge. 

He swung after them, keeping high enough to avoid their notice as he followed the car the last couple blocks to the studio. When Harry got out, Louis' heart skipped a happy beat at the sight of curls and tired green eyes. 

His pleasure faded when he zoomed in and noticed just how exhausted Harry looked. Why had he told that man—that smarmy-looking older gent getting out of the car behind him—that he was all right? Harry was the most important person there; he should demand to be taken home at once so he could rest.

But Harry only let his head droop down on his neck as the older man banged on the studio door. Louis gritted his teeth. He did not understand much about Harry's world, and Zayn would tell him to leave well enough alone until he did—but Louis had never excelled at leaving anything alone. 

He swooped down, landing with a soft whoosh an arm's length from Harry, who jumped in surprise. His eyes went wide as he took in the sight of Louis in costume. Then he burst into giggles.

For a moment, Louis' stomach lurched, certain that Harry had recognized him. But Harry's eyes flicked to the top of Louis' head, and he remembered the hat he had stolen from Constable Payne. 

He touched the brim with a bit of a courtly bow, making Harry giggle harder. "Yes, I know," Louis said, pitching his voice lower than normal. "This new public relations scheme is rather daft, but we're doing the best we can, innit."

Harry tried to school his face into a more serious look. "I'm sure you're a big hit with small children and arachnid enthusiasts." 

Louis pumped his gloved fist in the air. "Yes! Finally, an educated person who knows what a spider is."

Harry giggled again. "Do I get a prize?"

Behind him, the studio door was opening, and a large man was leaning out, frowning as he noticed the strange costumed boy talking to Harry. Louis threw him a little salute, and then took the police hat off his head and put it on Harry's. It settled onto curls gone limp with a long day and too much product, making Harry look like an overtired little boy playing dress-up.

"There you go," Louis said softly as the first large man, followed by a second larger man, emerged from the building and crept towards Louis with as much stealth as two burly men could manage. "Looks much better on you, I reckon."

Then he leapt straight up in the air just as one of the burly men made a grab for him. As he shot a web to pull himself up to the roof, he had to look back at Harry one more time. 

Harry was grinning up at him, hand pressed to the top of the hat to keep it on his head as he tilted his face up to watch Louis go. He waved and almost lost the hat. Louis laughed as Harry fumbled with the hat, trying to pull his phone out of his pocket at the same time. 

Then he raced home where his own phone waited. 

***  
"Louis." 

Zayn's voice barely touched Louis' ears before dissipating into the heavy fog of sleep. Ignoring it was less a choice and more a state of being.

"Louis." This time the words came with physical violence (or at least a good shake). "Louis, wake the fuck up."

He rolled away from Zayn's hand in a last attempt at escape. But the gears in Louis' brain creaked into motion despite his best efforts at inertia. "What," he finally croaked in surrender.

"What the fuck did you think you were doing last night?"

Last night. Louis' fingers tightened around his phone, where Harry had been babbling away about his encounter with Louis' alter ego last night. The texts had come in spurts, whenever Harry could steal a moment with his phone in the studio. Louis had fallen asleep in one of the silent spaces, smiling into his pillow. 

Harry thought he was cool. Harry had no idea who he was, but that made little dent in Louis' happiness. 

"It was so sick," he mumbled into the duvet, poking at his phone screen until it lit up. "You should've seen me, Zayner."

"I saw you. The whole fucking city's probably seen you by now."

Surprise jolted Louis the rest of the way into the waking world. "Huh? What're you on about? It was just me and Harry there, and a couple of his blokes." 

"And a paparazzo with a telephoto lens." Something papery flumped down next to Louis' head. He wrinkled his nose to escape the tickling edges, then picked it up as he rolled to his back and sat up. 

He had to stare down at the newspaper for several seconds before he took in the fact that there was a photograph of him and Harry on the front page of the Manchester Daily Bugle. MASKED HOODLUM ASSAILS MANCHESTER POP IDOL, screamed the headline. Louis bristled.

"Assail? What kind of bullshit is this?" He shook the paper up at Zayn. "Look at that, we're having a perfectly nice chat. Then I gave him me hat, innit."

"Your hat." Zayn took the paper—and then used it to whack Louis in the back of his head. "Louis, you idiot. Stop missing the point."

"Yeah, yeah, you're right." Louis took the paper back and stared down at the photo again before breaking into a wide grin. "I'm on the front page! This is so sick."

"Louis!" Zayn growled. "That thing about there's no such thing as bad publicity? That's not actually true."

"Oi, listen to this." Louis shook out the paper and frowned down at the bit that caught his eye. "'The bug-eyed miscreant was masquerading as a police officer, but looked more likely to have escaped from a traveling circus, or insane asylum.' Now they're insulting my fashion sense. Zayn, you have to go tell these people what's what."

"Hang on." Zayn sank down on the edge of Louis' mattress, finger flicking over the screen of his phone in a steady rhythm. "People are commenting on it online. This one guy said you saved him from a bunch of scroats who were threatening him and shoving him around."

Louis shifted over to read over Zayn's shoulder. "Yeah, I remember him. He lives a few blocks from here; think he's a groundskeeper at the uni. Comes in once a week for his americano." 

"Right. Always tips. Weirdo." Zayn flicked to the next comment. "Hey, this sounds like your first customer. 'Bug Boy saved me from this tosser trying to nick my nan's diamond necklace. He was a right weirdo, but God knows what would have happened if he hadn't shown up.'"

"Bug Boy?" Louis huffed with derision. "How's that for gratitude?"

"There's no such thing as bad publicity?" Zayn tried with a sheepish shrug.

"That better not stick, is all I'm saying." Louis clambered past Zayn and out of the bed, heading out on a mission for tea. He stopped at his bedroom door and turned to point back at Zayn. "You're my image man, Zayner. Fix this."

An hour later, after Louis had enjoy two cuppas and a brief giggle with Harry over the article, Zayn wandered into the kitchen and put his phone down in front of Louis before wandering off again. Louis picked it up and started reading the article comment Zayn had left on the screen. 

It was Zayn's writing, no question of that style, a long, dramatic, and completely fictional account of how the "Spider-Man" had saved him from a deadly robbery-slash-murder attempt while he carried the day's shop receipts to the bank to deposit at midnight, something neither Zayn nor any Starbucks employee had ever done in living memory. But Zayn's little bit of pulp fiction had done its job: as Louis scrolled down, every comment after it, positive or negative, referred to him as the Spider-Man.

"Spider-Man," Louis repeated to himself. He imagined Harry saying the name in his deep, steady voice. Spider-Man.

Yeah. He could work with that.

***

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you're still enjoying the story! Comments totally welcome, either here or at [my tumblr](http://corilannam.tumblr.com). Thank you for reading, either way!
> 
> Now with a [shiny Tumblr masterpost](http://corilannam.tumblr.com/post/124843524953/this-tangled-web-by-corilannam-a-1d-spiderman), which you can reblog, you know, if you like.
> 
> Coming soon:  
> Chapter 4: Opportunities


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